Men Against the State

CHAPTER III

The Colonial Period: “Utopia” and “Modern Times”

I

The middle and late 1840’s saw the collapse of the most numerous and the most ambitious of all the attempts of a non-political nature made toward producing socio-economic reform in American history. The intellectual revolt against social convention and the economic status quo, spearheaded by a restless intelligentsia, expressed itself during this time in practical adventures in the socialism of Charles Fourier1 and his brilliant associate Victor Considérant.2 The successors to the Owenites of the two previous decades, Fourierite colonies experienced a similar rise, popularity and eclipse,3 surpassing their predecessors both in the meteoric nature of their rise and the abruptness of their decline.

Josiah Warren, a keen student of Fourierism, found it objectionable on a number of counts. Joint stock capitalization, community of property arrangements, reliance on altruism as the source of motivation for the performance of the distasteful tasks of the group, these and the dilution of responsibility, on which he placed much blame for the reduction of the New Harmony Community of Equality, were his principal indictments of the socialist phalansteries. Convinced that this furious activity was a mistake, Warren determined to wait out its complete dissipation in New Harmony,4 but other factors intervened. Attempts to obtain land for a new village had been made in the vicinity of Cincinnati during the early part of 1847, without definite results.5 Other independent actions being equally indecisive, the opportunity came once more from the termination of a rival enterprise, as the Tuscarawas community had grown from the remnants of Spring Hil previously.

In November of the previous year the Clermont Phalanx, one of the largest and most promising of the Fourierite settlements which had been located about thirty miles up the Ohio from Cincinnati, suddenly collapsed. As often happened in other similar cases, the land and property of the group fell into the hands of the principal stockholders. Most of the members of the phalanx returned to Cincinnati, where the whole project had been born, but a sufficient number of enthusiasts remained to preserve hope in the eventual success of some type of community life. Much of the land was bought by a communal group led by three veterans in settlements of this nature, John O. Wattles, John P. Cornell and Hiram S. Gilmore, who began the construction along Owenite lines. A community building, partially inspired by the several similar structures of Rappite origin at New Harmony and intended for the accommodation of six families, was built on the site of the former location, but the attempt did not prosper.6 A small number of the earlier group also persevered, living on a piece of communally-held land, where they were visited by Warren in June, 1847 while occupied in discussions as to future action. If he had acquired a measure of recognition as an inventor, the individualist was even better known among community people, no less among those who expressed distaste for his theories. The Fourierites spoke of him as “a man of no ordinary talents,” and the success of his practical experimentation had given him the reputation of being a man of action as well as a theoretician.

Warren was successful in prevailing upon the ex-phalansterians to take up the cost-price individualist variety of decentralization. Shortly thereafter7 the second essay in anarchist community life, variously known as “Utopia” and “Trialville,” was begun on a tract of land on the bank of the Ohio River about a mile from the site of the Clermont Phalanx, The labor exchange ideal prevailed from the beginning. The owner of the land, an ex-member of the previous group named Jernegan, was induced to set aside a portion for a townsite. Streets and alleys were surveyed and laid out, while 80 quarter acre lots for home building constituted the initial physical extent of the projected new community. These lots were placed on sale to prospective settlers at a fixed price of fifteen dollars each, which included the cost of the surveying. A contract calling for the continuation of this price policy until all lots were sold, and lasting for at least three years in event of any circumstances, was signed at this time. Purchasers were restricted by agreement to not more than two lots. Renewals of the price agreement were made periodically, Warren reporting after a visit to the village nine years after its commencement that lots were still being sold to new settlers at “prime cost.”8 Admissions to the colony after the first gathering were made upon invitation by one of these first residents, in accordance with Warren’s declaration that the most precious element of personal liberty was “the liberty to choose our associates at all times.” It was hoped that in this manner the intrusion of “disturbers” would be checked, and that persons impelled “to inculcate any particular beliefs or Isms of any kind against the voluntary inclination of others would . . . find themselves . . . disagreeably situated.”9 Warren made a distinction between trouble makers and holders of divergent opinions, since conformity was neither expected nor desired; “differences . . . are a valuable part of our harmony.” This attempt to filter out proponents of other ideas than equitable commerce, relatively successful at “Utopia,” was to break down completely at “Modern Times” ten years later. There the efforts of varied reform protagonists all but scuttled the economic experiments.

Four families became the original core of the new town, and were able, by exchanging labor, to build satisfactory homes “before Christmas.” An associate of Warren’s, Daniel Prescott, began the construction of a brick kiln and yard, while some building stone was cut in the vicinity and lumber cut and carried to the building site. The small knot of disillusioned and nearly impoverished Fourierites who composed the group found themselves in far better economic position upon taking stock late the following spring. Nearly two dozen families occupied the site, most of whom were already living in their own houses. Warren noted that no one had moved away since the beginning. Prescott had taken the initiative in constructing a saw and grist mill, while Warren developed a “printing office” in a portion of the former’s large brick house and began printing the Peaceful Revolutionist once more.10

The first issue of the paper contained detailed accounts of the cost in money and labor which attended the first ten months of construction, and letters from enthusiastic settlers describing their satisfaction with affairs up to that time. Wrote E. G. Cubberley:11

I was in the Clermont Phalanx nearly three years, and paid in two hundred and seven dollars; and worked hard all the time, with not the best of eatables either; and at the end of the time I found myself rather badly situated—No money, no good clothes, no tools to commence work with, no any thing. . . . Last July, when Mr. Jernegan had this town laid out, I thought I would buy a lot and . . . be gathering materials through the winter, for building on it in the spring . . . on enquiry of those who had the brick, lumber, etc. I found I could exchange my labor for theirs. . . . I have now got a brick house, one story and a half high, sixteen by eighteen feet. . . . I borrowed twenty six dollars to commence my business with, and paid all that and had thirty dollars left. I now have a house and lot, and all I owe on it is two dollars and seventy nine in money, and about four days labor. I feel now that I am a whole individual—not a piece of a mass, or of somebody else, as I was in combination.

The “Jack of all trades” role was promoted among the settlers, with the desire being to create and develop all the needed skills among the residents that “heads and hands” might be employed “according to the demand.” When the need for a particular skill temporarily ceased, Warren maintained it was “absolutely necessary” that persons thus trained seek “full employment” in another way; “he is ten times a citizen who can perform a citizen’s part in ten different positions; and more than this, when he is ready and willing to teach others to be as useful as himself.”12

The labor note currency was adopted, and a time store selling basic merchandise at the usual drastically reduced prices found the same support from its patrons and aroused the customary resentment among merchants.13 Warren began his music training school once more on the labor exchange basis, with no conventional currency transactions and with children as young as nine years of age participating. His summary of the prevailing situation at “Utopia” in the spring of 1848 is a recital of material and spiritual gains which would have gladdened the heart of any individual anarchist half a century later:14

Throughout the whole of our operations on the ground, everything has been conducted so nearly upon the Individual basis that not one meeting for legislation has taken place. No Organization, no indefinite delegated power, no “Constitutions,” no “laws” or “bye laws,” “rules” or “regulations” but such as each individual makes for himself and his own business. No officers, no priests nor prophets have been resorted to—nothing of either kind has been in demand. We have had a few meetings, but they were for friendly conversation, for music, dancing or some other social and pleasant pastime. Not even a single lecture upon the principles upon which we were acting has been given on the premises! It was not necessary; for (as a lady remarked yesterday) “the subject once stated and understood, there is nothing left to talk about”—All is action after that.

Warren went on to say that rights of person and property prevailing in the community existed by grace of and were defined by “public opinion,” in essence a re-affirmation of his belief in the superiority of common law over statute law as a guide for human affairs. Judgments on what he termed “mere differences of opinion” in all other relationships were left to “the supreme decision of each individual,” operating under the understanding that responsibility, or “cost,” was an integral part of any act on the part of mature individuals. Failure to assume responsibility for acts placed the person in the same category as minor children, but nothing was said as to how such delinquency was dealt with at “Utopia.”

“Utopia” not only was a community without a formal government; it also persevered without the presence of a patriarch and escaped the general fate which fell to those whose fortunes were inextricably interwoven with those of a dominant leader. Sensitive to criticism and troubled at this time by discussions elsewhere as to the credit for originality of the principles of “equitable commerce,” it became Warren’s conviction that his personality stood in the way of the growth of the movement. Shortly before leaving “Utopia” he declared, “I have a thousand times felt that if this subject had originated with someone who was dead I could have done perhaps a thousand times more for it.” Restless as ever, he left when the venture was hardly more than a year old,15 placing the little band of pioneers in anarchist decentralism entirely upon their own devices. The spirit of Warrenism remained there for a quarter of a century, however. In 1849, Amos E. Senter published a second edition of his Equitable Commerce on the grounds,16 and by the end of the following year most of Warren’s economic teachings had become part of the life of the gathering of individualists.

The residents of “Utopia” wasted no time in fruitless wrangling over differences of opinion connected with Warren’s cost economy. Where critics aimed such shafts as the impossibility of determining the absolute accuracy of the labor hour as a medium of exchange, the small group of adherents preferred to work out a practical compromise. By the end of 1851, including the three other experiments where the mutual labor exchange had been introduced, several thousand people had participated. Two contemporary observations summarizing the results of this varied interchange of labor notes give some evidence of the degree of advancement toward a realization of their objective. When the decision was made to adopt corn as a medium of exchange at the rate of 20 pounds to the hour as an alternative to supplying the actual labor, a suspicion set in that disorder would result due to wildly fluctuating extremes. An examination of the labor notes indicated that the variation from the 20 pound yard stick was a third above or below this figure, reflecting changing costs of production which were expected to alter all labor notes payable only in hours of labor as well. In a number of other aspects of economic life at “Utopia,” several products found the “general level” which Warren claimed earlier would occur as a result of the action of “public opinion.” It is more likely that the determining factor was the existing pattern of technical learning and the stage of machine production which the colony tended to become adapted to.

The labor exchange as it worked here is quite illuminating, nevertheless. With respect to agricultural products, the customary price for wheat became six hours to the bushel, milk settled to ten minutes per quart, while eggs remained undisturbed at twenty minutes a dozen. Some manufactured goods also became “fixed”; shoes varied from three to nine hours, depending on the quality, with eighteen hours the figure for boots.17 Still it was expected that the labor price would always be subject to change as new production methods were introduced, with the expectation that such changes would work for the increase of the volume of goods per hour of time expended in production, a gain for every one in the community. There was a choice for the producer as well, however, in all this. The individual might choose increased prosperity for increased work, or a shortened work day if he had more modest material ambitions. In either case, the decision was to be made with the understanding that the consequences were to be borne by the individual concerned.18

The community at “Utopia” never became a large or prominent one at any time. In 1852 the total number of residents approached one hundred. Approximately twenty families were established on the grounds, and this situation remained practically unchanged during the next two years.19 By the winter of 1854, few of the original lots remained for sale to new settlers. The activities of the residents by this time had become more and more industrial in nature. The mutualists operated several enterprises on the labor for labor basis, including a saw and grist mill, a steam mill adapted to a number of services, including corn grinding and the turning of both wood and iron products, as well as a carpenter shop. Most of the machinery in this latter building was powerdriven. The modest needs of the inhabitants found room for the services of three carpenters, two shoemakers, a glazier and a painter, while, despite the limited opportunity to practice the cost economy, enough vigor in the system prevailed to support two time stores.20

Warren considered “Utopia” a successful demonstration of all he had been asserting since his defection from Owenite socialism. In view of his later disappointments, this Ohio village was without doubt the outstanding example of decentralist social and economic principles in actual operating situations. His last visit, in the winter of 1855-56, was the occasion for an enthusiastic report to the public concerning its perseverance. “Utopia” by this time consisted of some forty buildings, about half of which were devoted to industrial purposes. Optimism radiated in the estimate of the accomplishments there:21

. . . my visit to that little germ of Equitable society, now eight and a half years old, has given me higher hopes and expectations than I had before dared to entertain. It is not the display that the little group of buildings makes to the eye . . . but knowing the means by which these . . . have been acquired, and seeing that there the subject of Equity has had eight years and six months deep study and practical trial, and that from the beginning . . . the subject had lost nothing with those who first took hold of it . . . but had gained . . . from year to year in their highest judgment and affectionate regard.

The major energies of Warren and his associates had swung to the East by this time, however, where the more pretentious but less successful “Modern Times” was entering a critical period of its varying fortunes. Thus at the time the report of the success at “Utopia” was being made, the Ohio group was already becoming less and less prominent in the eyes of the other individualists, and practically disappeared from the thoughts and literature of the articulate individualist anarchist propaganda in a later generation. The impact of the Civil War and cheap lands westward had serious consequences for the little adventure in mutualism, as well as the prevailing policy of modesty with reference to publicity, which had a discouraging effect upon recruitment of additional settlers and potential converts.22

It is true that the experimental nature of “Utopia” precluded indiscriminate outside participation in its activities, a matter brought about by continual fear of widespread censure by moralists for harboring persons whose behavior might have been considered excessively uncon-ventional.23 In view of the apprehension of the general conservative mind, especially concerning divergence in matters of thought and action of sexual nature, the policy of allowing the first settlers to choose subsequent permanent residents was undoubtedly a wise one.

As late as 1875 a few of the original settlers still occupied portions of the area, which by now had become known as Smith’s Landing. Occasional reports indicated that some of the business transacted by residents continued to be done on the labor exchange principle, and that despite the serious depression then prevailing in the nation at large, labor notes based on corn continued to be honored with little fluctuation from the first estimates made almost thirty years before.24 “Utopia” in the more correct sense, however, had ceased being of significance in American social life at least a decade before. When approached from the point of view of Josiah Warren, who conceived the venture as a proving ground for principles and not as an attempt to revolutionize American civilization, it was a qualified success. In a reminiscence made eight months before his death he declared that the experiment “worked to our satisfaction.”25 It is in this matter of intention that the anarchist community differed from its allied and contemporary so-called “Utopian” schemes; permanent survival at no time constituted a basic objective, at least as far as the settlements in question were concerned.

Warren nevertheless experienced a disappointment which was common among the reformers of mid-nineteenth century America. The faith in mere demonstration as a force sufficiently compelling to attract numerous followers can be found throughout the varied hues of the movement, accompanied by almost universal eventual rejection or unconcern. Warren’s fond hope of numerous imitations of “Utopia” likewise foundered but not until the experiences of community life had been extended by the promise and dampened by the factionalism at “Modern Times.”

II

In the summer of 1848, Warren returned to Boston, after an absence of almost thirty years. Such a move was no indication that he had given up the Midwest as a field for further propaganda and experimentation; in fact, he was back in New Harmony less than two years later.26 It is probable that the intellectual stimulation provided by contact with many radical minds in the East, however, had much to do with the decision to combine efforts with friends and once more prepare for action on a project first proposed by Frances Wright and Robert Dale Owen in 1830, an individualist colony in the vicinity of New York City.

In Boston he became acquainted with William B. Greene,27 whose own branch of economic thought later became incorporated in anarchist financial theory. Association with the freethought movement provided occasions for lectures on equitable commerce to gatherings of this group, which contained diverse liberal and radical elements. It is probable that here he also developed his association with Stephen Pearl Andrews. Andrews, a prominent New York intellectual and veteran of several reform movements, became Warren’s first important convert in the advocacy of decentralism and individualism. It was also in New York that Warren developed to a high degree his reputation as a lecturer before small groups of interested listeners, who gathered together for this purpose in the homes of members of varied reform proclivities.28

At about the time Warren became acquainted with Andrews, he also began relations with Charles Coffin Jewett, who had been appointed the Librarian of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, and who was looking for a satisfactory printing process to print the Institution’s first centralized catalog of books. His search led him to Warren, and the two men worked together for some time before Jewett decided to employ Warren’s stereotyping process. While this was going on, Warren was still interested in the mutual village in Ohio and in doubt as to whether he should return, and at the same time was speaking frequently around Boston, discussing with Andrews the possibility of another colony on Long Island, and making trips to Washington to confer with Jewett. It was indeed a busy time.

From the fall of 1850 into the spring of 1851, Warren described the technical progress of his process in his correspondence to Andrews, and his cordial relations with Jewett; the two apparently shared considerable mutual respect and affection. “Mr. Jewett is delighted with the very first results here,” he wrote Andrews early in October, and subsequent cheerful dispatches from Boston or Washington culminated with the triumphant announcement in mid-March, 1851 that Jewett was “perfectly delighted” with their application of the process to his cataloguing project, followed by the heartwarming news on April 1 that a committee set up by the Smithsonian had investigated his printing process “most severely,” had reported “unqualifiedly in its favor,” and “had advised purchase for the Institution.” It was indeed a day of high joy for Warren.29

An explanation of the strategy which resulted in the decision to form an individualist colony on Long Island was never made, although three important circumstances have significant bearing on the matter. Andrews’ contacts in New York and his wide association with many varieties of radical thought in and around the city undoubtedly made possible a ready dissemination of information as well as details for the recruitment of persons interested in colonization. Secondly, it had long been a contention of Warren’s that origins of a decentralist colony along his lines should always be made near a large city,30 with the unabashed intention of using the older community as a prop until the economy of the new community was a functioning reality. Finally, Warren’s acquaintance with prominent land reformers31 in New York, as well as knowledge of their literature, had helped to reveal to him a usually ignored fact. The rush of the land-hungry to the new areas of Iowa and Minnesota now and then by-passed pockets of relatively inaccessible soil which the railroads subsequently opened up. In general there were few who were sufficiently impressed or possessed with sufficient powers of deduction to take advantage of opportunities of this kind, and Long Island was one of them, an incident which followed this expansion of transportation.

Opened up by the belated building of the Long Island .Railroad, some half million acres of land became available for occupation and use in the 1840’s, but a general movement upon it did not take place. The character of portions of it was distinctly inhibitory; thick growths of scrub oak and jack pine made the land costly to clear, and the sandy loam was considered unproductive unless treated with considerable applications of manure and other types of fertilizer.32 On the other hand, there were those who presented factors in its favor from an agricultural point of view. Farm experts already settled on parts of the island declared that although these objections might be true, the land produced amply, and the proximity of the New York market made an investment in land here more desirable economically than in the newly-opened areas of the trans-Mississippi country. Few agreed with them, on any account, and as a result, an unopened country, relatively speaking, remained at the door of the nation’s largest city. With such circumstances prevailing, the impulse behind the beginning of “Modern Times” becomes a little better understood.

By the end of 1850, Warren and Andrews had worked out their plans and strategy, and practical operations were just a step away. Warren himself was on the scene in January, 1851 with a handful of the first members, Andrews remaining in New York to complete arrangements with the owners of the land upon which the individualists were to found their town.33 Warren had not overlooked Andrews’ value as a propagandist in the cause; the latter’s writings and lectures became a primary source of information to the outside as to the aims and accomplishments of the Long Island group.

“Modern Times” “commenced,” according to Warren, on March 21, 1851. The site of the “rudimental town” was on a tract of 750 acres of land about four miles from the ocean on the south side of the island and about 40 miles34 out from the city of New York. A factor of consider able influence in the choice of this particular site, according to Charles A. Codman, later to become the last survivor of the original community people, was the fact that the owners were willing to accept a very small cash down payment and a five year bond for the balance due. This extension of payment was a matter of great concern, in view of the lack of capital.35

About 90 acres of this area was set aside for the town itself, which was laid out in 49 blocks. The town consisted of seven streets running north and south and seven avenues running east and west, with right angle intersections. The blocks were divided into four lots each, with a frontage of 200 feet, and each block had an alley running only in the north-south direction. In the center of each of these alleys was a well. The alleys were common property in the beginning, and this matter rose to plague the residents of a somewhat later time, since there was no ostensible manner of obtaining title to this land. Through involved legal proceedings, however, the alleys were attached to the lots and no longer exist.36

As had before been arranged at ‘Utopia,” a contract was secured providing that all land would be sold to individual settlers at cost, the acre lot selling for approximately $20. Three acres was the maximum holding which any person might purchase in the town.37 Warren had in mind an “equitable village” of 100038 persons possessing a wide variety of occupations, not a purely agricultural community. For this reason, ownership in the town itself was restricted, although those interested in farming had access to the remaining land on the periphery of the town, which sold for the same price.

“Modern Times” was a hand-picked congregation at the beginning. A policy of expediency was adopted which allowed the first ten purchasers of land to screen later buyers, who had to be acceptable to one of these ten before being admitted to the group. Similar to the policy in effect at “Utopia,” both Warren and Andrews admitted that this and other actions were violations of the principles which they advocated, but justified this as a protection against the acquisition of vital areas by persons who might be either indifferent or hostile to the cost economy experiment.39 This policy was gradually abandoned, as friends rather than enemies were to furnish the distressing occasions in later years and eventually contribute to the abandonment of most of the desired goals. Even in the early months, however, it was stressed that individual responsibility was the foundation upon which they were building, and that it was up to each person to satsify himself as to what type of organization he sought to create. At no time were potential settlers or interested persons discouraged from learning what was being attempted “on the grounds”; Andrews said:40

. . . we recommend all those who are desirous of removal to an equitable village, first to visit it, and remain long enough . . . to form the personal acquaintance of those who are already there, to penetrate thoroughly their designs, the spirit by which they are imbued, and the extent of their moral and material means of accomplishing what they propose.

The earliest residents engaged in a variety of endeavors during the first year. Small houses, generally log cabins, began to be erected, with the usual separation of money and labor costs. Daniel D. Thompkins Moore, founder and editor of The Rural New Yorker, described the soil of Brentwood, the later name of the townsite and the extended community which exists there today,41 as “a fine genial brown loam,” very similar to the market garden lands of England, and later experience was to prove its productivity. In the beginning, appearances were far less promising. Outside help was utilized to aid in clearing and plowing land intended for agriculture, which proved somewhat costly in most cases. Removal of scrub growth and roots generally cost $30 an acre. Most of the woody materials, amounting to from twenty to thirty cords per acre, were burned and re-applied to the soil, a type of dressing which was highly esteemed.42 Agricultural land further required some $40 worth of fertilizer per acre, land being thus prepared yielding surprising crops of several varieties of garden truck, which was later marketed in the city. This was facilitated by the fact that Thompson’s Station, the stop on the railroad, was a short distance north of the village.43

Warren himself engaged in the building activities, erecting a house at a total money cost of $120, which he later sold for the same sum.44 Building costs were appreciably lowered by another of his inventions, a method of making bricks from the gravel and lime of the area and hardening these by drying in the sun. By the end of the first year he had also completed a combination workshop and apprentice school which was known as the “college,” a brick structure thirty-two feet square, two stories high. The lower floor was devoted to a time store and shops, the upper and the attic were devoted to ordinary dwelling space.

By the middle of 1853, “Modern Times” had become physically attractive. Most of the land on the town site had been cleared and the original log cabins replaced by well-constructed cottages. The streets were beginning to be lined with shade and fruit trees, and the discovery of soft water of fine quality at depths of from thirty to forty feet proved to be another distinct advantage.45 Building on the labor exchange principle was a pursuit of nearly all the men. Some sixty persons now occupied the premises, a meager number still, when compared with Warren’s expectations, yet this represented an increase almost triple that of ten months previous. The townsmen were quite frank in admitting that they had by no means perfected their economic institution. Some residents practiced trades and supplied services which were in little demand, with the result that they were forced to work for wages in New York. The group failed as well in their immediate achievement of self-reliance for all material needs, some of which were of necessity procured in the city.46 In spite of adversities, faith in the soundness of their economic and social conceptions abounded. Confident that numbers sufficient to provide demand for the labor of all would arrive soon, preparations for the construction of a labor exchange were arranged much similar to that which had existed as an accompaniment to the first Cincinnati time store. Still more important was the general morale prevailing; a visitor and subsequent member reported, “the movement . . . does inspire its votaries here . . . with a confidence and zeal that cannot be surpassed.”47

While the practical operations were being conducted at “Modern Times,” the propaganda of Warrenite anarchist economic and social doctrines, directed by Andrews in New York, flared brilliantly, with repercussions from several directions. At about the time that preparations were being made to move out to the site selected for the demonstration of Individual Sovereignty, Andrews formed an association with the Fowlers and Wells Company, a firm of book publishers specializing in the writings of several fragments of the radical movement of the time. Although their particular interest lay in phrenology and spiritualism,48 The Fowler brothers undertook the dissemination of a series of modest volumes which brought the core of native American anarchist thought before a sizeable cross-section of the nation’s reading public.

In 1851, Andrews’ Science of Society49 series first appeared. The next year a second edition of this was accompanied by a third edition of Warren’s Equitable Commerce, which Andrews admitted as the source of his ideas. As a companion of the theoretical works, Fowlers brought out Warren’s early experiences in a volume titled Practical Details in Equitable Commerce, two editions being printed from the same plates in 1852 and 1854.

The reprinting of Equitable Commerce was the signal for the reopening of the controversy with the highly articulate group of Fourierites now centered in New York around Horace Greeley, Charles Dana and the New York Tribune. This was the last important stand of Associationist socialism both in theory and practice, the North American Phalanx in nearby New Jersey being their last community in sound condition. From this time on the “Modern Times” colony was to get little support and less peace from the metropolitan area, primarily as a result of the searchlight which was to be turned upon it by the Tribune. A disparaging three and a half column review of Equitable Commerce, generally attributed to George Ripley, erstwhile president of the Brook Farm Association, broke out in the pages of the Tribune in the summer of 1852. Andrews attempted to soften its impact with a two column letter to the editor in rebuttal,50 but Warren personally was apathetic; in a letter to Andrews in July of the same year, he said:51

You know I have long ago ceased to hope for anything from Editors or any others who have any particular position or isms to sustain. . . . The great point is to inform the public what we really mean before leaders get a chance to misrepresent our views and movements.

In actuality criticism by exponents of Fourierism was a minor item as an element of detraction. “Modern Times,” like Brook Farm a few years earlier, was beginning to attract visitors possessed with an insatiable curiosity as to the social life of the new model town.52 The Warrenite conception of individuality had no room for restrictions upon the religious or moral beliefs and practices of the residents any more than upon any other aspects of their existence. Compliance with religious and marital customs and regulations was a voluntary matter. The lack of coercion and the fastening of responsibility for all behavior upon the individual created an area of free movement invigorating to the residents and a source of consternation to those outside possessing more strait-laced convictions. Complete respect for individual peculiarities also served to attract eccentrics or rebels at convention, and in the case of enlightened ladies in the habit of wearing bloomers or men’s clothing, created a sensational focus for scandal for outsiders.53 “Modern Times” as Warren conceived it did not abolish restraints which the outside considered essential to social well-being; it merely failed to recognize that an element of restriction was necessary in an environment where it was assumed that freedom of action should have no limitation beyond the refraining from infringement upon rights of others to do the same. The assumption of responsibility, the avoidance of the inflicting of the consequences of one’s acts upon others, was felt sufficient as a principle of social behavior.

It is not surprising, then, to observe the attack upon “Modern Times” as a center of sexual irregularity,54 among other things. Although unfounded, such charges did have validity when reviewed as a reflection of the moral concepts of a period dominated by lip service to puritanical codes of sexual deportment.55 The whispering campaign of critical observers and gossips, aided by a barrage of innuendo furnished by the New York newspapers, finally forced the residents into an act of self-defense. In September, 1852, Warren addressed a circular to the “general public” which all the “adult citizens” in the colony signed. In it he developed the case for the individualists, hoping to allay the suspicions of the righteous and at the same time demonstrate to potential friends the real nature of the activities on Long Island and deflate the collection of disturbing rumors in existence.

Concerned over the tendency of visitors and others to look upon the assemblage as a secret cult due to their reticence and aversion toward publicity, Warren hastened to inform all that no society or organization existed, nor did the residents have a rigid corporate structure which arbitrarily restricted membership. Re-affirming the belief in the soundness of the policy of absolute individual responsibility for opinions and conduct, as well as the economic experiments being made, he appealed to outsiders to base their judgments upon accurate, reliable reports and not hearsay, in which category he placed most of the press notices. In like manner he deprecated the destructive rumors “by those whose object it is to ride high upon any hobby, even at the expense of other people,” seeking to “ruin what they cannot rule.” Suggesting the reading of recently published books explaining the philosophy of individual sovereignty rather than relying on ignorance and prejudice, he protested in the name of “The City of Modern Times”: “We cannot consent to have our time consumed . . . and our peace continually disturbed in refuting ignorant, vile, and ridiculous fabrications.”56

The continued association of Warren’s name with imagined and real social irregularities provoked the publication of Positions Defined in August of the following year. Warren denied that the “Equity Movement” was necessarily characterized by unusual freedom in marriage relations, insisting that individual sovereignty was as valid with respect to retaining the conventional association as it was for advocating radical departures. Angered at being erroneously quoted, Warren in this leaflet publicly disavowed his connection with any speaker or paper purporting to represent him unless sanction with specifically given.

All efforts to continue developing in the pleasant obscurity which attended the sister settlement in Ohio went to naught, nevertheless, as the tendency for “Modern Times” to act as a magnet for unpopular and exotic beliefs continued to strengthen. Particularly damaging from the point of view of adverse public opinion was the temporary concentration there of the semi-mystical creed of “spiritual affinity,” under the leadership of Dr. Thomas L. Nichols.57 Combining portions of spiritualism, socialism, and what was later to be known as “women’s rights,” Nichols’ doctrine had by this time acquired the label “Free Love” among most of those outside who were acquainted with it. The advocacy of a general loosening of marriage ties and a greater freedom for women in all matters relating to the institution, despite its idealistic foundation, provoked a violent reaction in the newspapers and from clergymen.

Nichols’ appearance at “Modern Times” in 1853 had been preceded by the publication there a year before of a modest journal titled The Art of Living, which presented the case of the vanguard in the struggle for a greater degree of female social and economic equality.58 Spiritual Affinity aroused little concern among the practical people of “Modern Times,” many of whom had arrived at similar ideas and were already living them without a propaganda of literature, but Nichols and his close associates had pronounced influence in the city. What hope existed that the potential trouble would quietly subside evaporated when Andrews became involved in a three-cornered controversy with Horace Greeley and Henry James, dealing with aspects of love, marriage and divorce which were considered extremely delicate by segments of majority public opinion. Thereafter for the duration of its existence and well into the period when “Modern Times” had become Brentwood, the place became synonymous with scandalous behavior as well as a suspected hotbed of licentiousness, a state of mind which Andrews’ lengthy communications in the Tribune tended to make permanent.59

The removal of Nichols to Cincinnati a year later had little effect in reducing apprehension. A potential colonist, writing from Connecticut, queried as to the system prevailing at “Modern Times”:60

Is it intended that families live together similarly as in the monogamie system or in large Houses contemplated by Communists or in isolation and alone . . . by himself or herself. . . . Having of late been brought in contact with the writings of Mr. and Mrs. Nichols through their Journal . . . and in which I find many things to approve and not any really to condemn, although I may not as yet be able to sanction them and from his interest in the village presume that the principles there practiced or intended to be practiced there to be in unison with his.

Thus there existed considerable confusion and misunderstanding concerning the Warrenite town. Not only was there a belief that social chaos reigned, but among its friends there was no general agreement as to its essential nature, with estimates ranging all the way from community of property to a mere collection of hermits and recluses. Not many more than the fifty or so families61actually residing there seemed to be aware of the voluntary coöperative community originally contemplated. Warren, no radical on the marriage question, deplored Nichols and the mixing of the labor and marriage reforms. He later blamed the whole matter as the cause of most of the trouble experienced and the principal reason why “Modern Times” failed to continue growing after the first three years.62 The “ogre,” as he labeled the “free love” movement, confronted nearly every social reform movement from Robert Owen’s time onward, in one form or another, threatening a complete split in the intellectual anarchist camp twenty years after “Modern Times.” The defection of Nichols63 and the withdrawal of Andrews from the ranks of the active propagandists neither brought the season of problems to an end nor did it result in a decrease in the volume of intellectual sorties on the Long Island social laboratory.

Notable among these was the bitter attack by Adin Ballou, the New Testament fundamentalist patriarch of Hopedale Community in Massachusetts. Hopedale, entering a period of declining fortunes which was to end in bankruptcy in February, 1856,64 combined a paternalistic religious atmosphere dominated by Ballou with an economy embodying some aspects of socialism but in actuality controlled by a minority group of stockholders, into whose hands the colony eventually fell. Ballou’s attention first became directed toward “Modern Times” following the desertion of several of his own group to the Warrenite settlement in 1853, as a result of the influence of the doctrines of Nichols.65 Ballou’s Practical Christian Socialism, published the next year, incorporated a severe castigation of Warren and the entire philosophy of individual sovereignty.66 Recognizing its position apart from the teachings of Owen, Fourier and John Humphrey Noyes, the Hopedale sage indicted it as “an irreligious, immoral and licentious doctrine,” deploring its non-committal stand on religion and its virtual rejection of belief in God by virtue of its uncompromising stand in placing the individual person at the apex of their system.

Scandalized by the report that marriage as an institution was subject to constant criticism and that residents of “Modern Times” entered the married state with neither the legal nor ecclesiastical sanctions normally obtained, Ballou launched an attack on such behavior as “Free Love promiscuity,” repeating for the most part the familiar misconceptions which the uninformed everywhere were propagating.67 Warren took little notice of Ballou’s criticisms of either the social or economic basis of “Modern Times,” although a Tribune article by the former stung him into an objection to the stress upon religious dogmatism and Christianity. Ballou intensely contested the Warren insistence upon the right to the full product of labor by the producer, but his alternative Warren found eminently unsatisfactory:68

. . . I decline any controversy with a man who is satisfied with the word “reasonable” as a standard of measurement in a disputed subject, as I would object to purchasing cloth of a merchant who used a gum elastic yard stick.

If Warren objected to the conversion of what primarily had been intended as an experiment in cost economy into an experimental station for sexual autonomy, he resented as markedly the undermining of the colony itself by Henry Edger, an early enthusiast and member. An Englishman by birth, Edger came to the United States69 in 1851 with the intention of joining Etienne Cabet’s well-known colony of Icaria, in Illinois.70 An early reading of Stephen Pearl Andrews’ Science of Society resulted in the transfer of his attachment to the individualist school. Andrews he continued to regard the progenitor of the movement, although it is improbable that the latter spent more than brief moments there after the community became established. Edger’s decision to become a member of the group was not made until the summer of 1853. Abandoning the profession of law, having been a barrister in London, he moved to “Modern Times”71 and made a living as a nurseryman for the duration of his stay of over twenty-five years. Affection for equitist principles had a brief sway, his energies the following year being taken up in the propagation of the philosophy of Auguste Comte, with whom he soon established a correspondence.72 His life thereafter became a dedication to Comtean Positivism, of which he was the first exponent in the United States.

The religious aspect of Positivism, the real concern of Comte as far as relations with Edger and “Modern Times” were concerned, appeared to other inhabitants as hardly more than a blunt reaction erected on a foundation of authoritarianism. As the Religion of Humanity, its principal objective appeared to be to them a frontal attack on individualism, attempting to substitute for the doctrine of self-interest an altruistic love of humanity in the mass. Its curious mixture of virgin and ancestor worship and obsession with authoritarian solutions had practically no appeal during the period it was propagated most vigorously in “Modern Times,” nor did its proposed restoration of a social matriarchy and introduction of a paternalistic economic system which faintly reflected attitudes which gained articulation later in the century in the celebrated “Gospel of Wealth.”73 To anarchists of a later generation who were among the first to examine the correspondence of Comte to Edger, much of the contents seemed hardly credible, especially the plan to convert “Modern Times” into a Positivist town and Long Island into a separate state in the union.74

In the hopes of conditioning the minds of the residents for the acceptance of the religious and economic centralized hierarchy which constituted the Comtean social system, Edger began a vigorous attack upon the very basis of the town, and fought its individualist and decentralist aspects. Professing to abhor the individual sovereignty doctrine now, he did not hesitate to admit that he planned to take advantage of the protection it offered; “. . . this little village where I live has, notwithstanding its pre-eminent anarchy, a powerful attraction for me. Here I meet at least with the widest tolerance.”75 Now began his vigorous propaganda campaign aimed at its overthrow, so that completely contradictory tenets might thus be substituted.

The establishment of a small Positivist chapel and the printing and circulating, in the fall of 1855, of a tract entitled Modern Times, The Labor Question and the Family, placed the Positivist stand squarely before the inhabitants. The ten principles formulated by Edger included the substitution of “duties” for “rights,” unqualified adherence to monogamie marriage, the development of a positivist priesthood, and insistence on the necessity of class differences,76 none of which found much acceptance among the original inhabitants. Particular resistance was met from the women, Edger observed; adherence to the particularly individualistic beliefs of spiritualism and women’s rights partially accounted for this attitude.77

Edger’s disparagement of the labor exchange had some effect, but sizeable portions of the town’s economy functioned through the use of labor notes long after his effort to paralyze it had dissipated itself. One of Edger’s fond hopes was the expectation of aid in the form of philanthropy, confident that such help would be forthcoming from some rich man attracted by the opportunity of status to be realized in the coming community.78 But no man of wealth, intrigued by the possibility of becoming a member of the apex of Comte’s future patriciate, or “Industrial Chivalry,” as it was termed, ever put in the anticipated appearance.

Generally speaking, Edger made practically no headway in the dissemination of Positivism at “Modern Times.” In a letter to Comte written in the early part of 1857 he reported disconsolately:79

. . . To confess the truth it is the small sympathy I can find among the members of our own school . . . that is my principal discouragement. What is all our philosophy, all our sociology, all our doctrine from beginning to end, in the absence of an actually constituted church and priesthood?

To this evidence of pessimism, including the admission of lack of believers, Comte had repeatedly rejoined with cautions against presumptions in such unusual circumstances:80

You attach too much importance to your abnormal surroundings at Modern Times. Even in the best environment, positivism can hope to convert only one one-thousandth of the present generation, . . . Conversions will be rare in your anarchical village. You should devote your attention above all to conservatives, who are . . . the most likely converts to positivism.

To Comte, Warren’s philosophy of mutual coöperation on a basis of individual responsibility was primitive and backward, advising that it was best ignored:81

You must not waste your time in publishing refutations of anarchical sophisms. Spend it rather in spreading positivisms by means of conversation.

Despite Warren’s anxiety, “Modern Times” remained adamant to Edger’s earnest proselytizing. The latter’s personal journal listed the membership of the Positivist Society of Modern Times in 1859 at only six beyond the members of his own family, and only four of these actually resided on Long Island.82 His failure as a missionary did not affect his reputation for he remained an esteemed citizen of the community for some time, during which he occasionally contributed articles on Comtean philosophy to liberal journals at irregular occasions. In one sense it might be held that Edger finally won out over “Modern Times” but not in the manner in which he expected. When the people elected to change the name of the community, during the Civil War, to Brentwood, they honored this first disciple of Auguste Comte, and his wife, both former residents of Brentwood, England.83

“Modern Times” in 1854 was a gathering of 37 families, with a slow, gradual growth in numbers constantly being expected. Most of the productive activities centered around agricultural projects of one kind or another. A fruit tree nursery of considerable excellence was functioning, with another “in contemplation.”84 Truck gardening, primarily vegetables for the New York market, was the principal source of outside income, still of vital importance as the group had not grown large enough to provide for an economy entirely divorced from the money economy of the outside. One of the newer developments by the late summer of this year was a type of community dining hall, a prototype of the modern cafeteria, which was managed by Clark Orvis, who later became important in perfecting the velocipede. This new endeavor, known as the “Dining Saloon,” afforded different opportunities than had usually been the lot in community projects of this sort. The individualization of the menu, providing some outlet for the expression of individual tastes, was looked upon by members of previous community life85 as a striking innovation, where they had been restricted to a common fare noted for its monotony, regardless of the intent in furthering the democratization of the group.

In this same year Warren began publication of his famous Periodical Letter, a monthly journal86 which explained the philosophy and activities of “Modern Times.” Though its circulation was small, it had surprising distribution, with subscribers throughout the country, as well as England and Ireland. For the next four years it served not only to present the Long Island social experiment to interested liberals and radicals but to provide Warren with a sounding-board for the expression of his views on a wide variety of current topics and events of both national and international concern. The diplomatic incidents with Denmark and England, the Know Nothings, constitutional interpretation, slavery, the bloodshed in Kansas, Fremont as a presidential candidate, all found interpretations from the incipient anarchist viewpoint.87

Warren, granting the moral issue involved in the slavery question, continued the non-committal stand which had been taken for decades by economic radicals, and which had been thoroughly expressed by George Henry Evans in an exchange with Gerrit Smith some time before. To men like Warren and Evans, chattel slavery was merely one side of a brutal situation, and although sympathetic with its opponents, refused to take part in the struggle unless it was extended to a wholesale attack on what they termed “wage slavery” in the states where Negro slavery no longer existed. Freedom was an abstract state which had little appeal if it merely meant grave economic distress where employers no longer cared for or needed the services of “free” labor.88

With reference to the looming war, Warren believed that conflict on such a scale was an inherent part of the underlying conditions attending the original “association” of the states, merely awaiting the proper occasion when an issue of sufficient gravity and concern would result in a rebellion of the minority, upon pressure from the majority.89 Slavery might be the immediate issue, he argued, but the possibilities of others in the future were guaranteed by the preservation of the structure of the political system.90 He refused to take sides in the controversy, although he accused the South of inconsistency in the matter of threatened secession. If they asserted their right to secede as a matter of principle, then it followed that the slaves also had a right to “secede” from their owners, since both associations, the Union and the institution of slavery, were artificial arrangements now fastened together by the expedients of statute law.91 However, if war was to be fought to preserve the political organization, he could see in this action only a sacrifice of the people to their own creature, the organization. For, as Warren wrote, “There has always been a perpetual contest between man and man made institutions; and although their struggles have cost the world more than all other causes put together, experience and learning seem to teach nothing to any purpose. Institutionalism is still sacred in the eyes of most people as Juggernaut in the eyes of its blind devotees. . . . So our civilization still continues in the midst of murder and confusion to invent and concoct institutions as substitutes for justice.” (Periodical Letter, II, pp. 53-54).

Thus until the eve of the war Warren continued to use the pages of the Periodical Letter to expound the anti-statist viewpoint, attacking political organization and the attendant evils which he considered the results of the conflicts produced by the contest for control of its destinies. In espousing the unpopular doctrines of decentralist voluntary coöperation and disinterestedness toward nationalism, the Periodical Letter preceded the twentieth century publications of the anarchist press which have persisted in presenting the same outlook with reference to modern problems, although the latter have operated in the face of suppression and persecution which Warren never experienced.

Although dismayed by the bad press which “Modern Times” received as a result of the activities of Nichols and Edger, and tempted to give the whole venture up as a result of revived interest in his stereotyping inventions, which threatened to divert his attention from the field of social reform entirely for a time,92 Warren remained attached to the little community. Following a brief trip to his home in New Harmony and a few months spent in Boston93 in the winter of 1855-56, he returned to Long Island and remained there until late in 1862.

The spring of 1857 saw the arrival of new adherents, alleged “secessionists” from Brook Farm who became known as the “Boston Group.” Among these were Charles A. Codman, Edward Linton, William U. Dame and several others and their families, one of whom was reputed to have been a treasurer of the famous Massachusetts community. The “Boston Group” contained among its members those who were to be the most tenacious of the “Modern Times” residents.94

“Modern Times,” with its local currency, felt little of the shock of the panic of 1857.95 Moncure Daniel Conway, a visitor there in the summer of this year,96 testified to the economic and social harmony prevailing among the less than 200 inhabitants. More impressed by the unusual dress of the women and other social novelties, notably the unconcern toward marriage ties and the absence of both a court or jail,97 Conway verified the operation of the cost economy and the use of the corn-backed labor note. At that time he observed that there appeared to be no concern over such evils as overissue and counterfeiting. For a time the labor notes exceeded the scope of their original intention. Used in transactions with citizens of neighboring towns, these notes became acceptable as payment for taxes for periods during the depression following the panic of this year.

The outbreak of the Civil War presaged the end of the ‘Modern Times” experiment in some aspects, and its modification in others. The first two years saw little change in the life of the village other than an expansion of the program of education.98 Warren advertised the beginning of an extensive training program in a number of trades and occupations, reflecting a continuation of the earlier stand he had taken against apprenticeships. The general public was invited to take part in the undertaking, although it appeared to be slanted toward attracting new residents, since much of the training offered favored trades and skills of especial advantage in the type of society which decentralism generally produced. The wide spread of interests included instruction in the playing of several musical instruments.99 Not much evidence exists that this ambitious program was ever put into action, or that the degree of expected participation was realized.

The confusion, unrest and apprehension created by the war began to have effect upon many of the original members of “Modern Times,” aggravated by rumors of heavy taxes and military draft plans during the latter part of the year 1862 and the first few months of the following year. Agitated by the violence and disruption which was becoming a part of the existence of many in all parts of the land, Warren published a curious tract, Modem Government and Its True Mission, A Few Words for the American Crisis, which advocated expedients greatly at variance with principles which have unalterable status among anarchists. A study of the work reveals a regression to functional aspects long taught by Robert Owen. In February, 1863, Warren went to Boston, and never returned to “Modern Times” again.

That same year, a number of the original settlers embarked from the island, bound for more peaceful lands,100 but the colony persevered. Suspected of being a hot-bed of vice in the post-war period, “Modern Times” preserved most of its community spirit throughout the era, although by this time the use of the labor note had declined as the economy of New York became more pervading. Stalked by John B. Ellis101 in the hopes of uncovering there a nest of “free-love,” responses to questions revealed little change in spirit in the two decades of existence. “We mind our own business,” declared an old resident:102

. . . the majority of people living in the village are legally married . . . but . . . our people don’t look on marriage as absolutely necessary. . . . We still hold the doctrine of Individual Sovereignty. It is that which has drawn here nearly every person who has come here, except those who were attracted by Warren’s Equitable Commerce. . . . We recognize every person’s right to do as he pleases, so long as he does not harm his neighbor.

Despite the evident evolution of the radical community into a more and more conventional town, Ellis remained highly suspicious of its moral influence, remarking in the manner of Anthony Comstock:103

That such a settlement, outwardly so attractive (for it is a pretty place) and yet so corrupt at heart, should exist almost within the shadow of the metropolis of the nation, is a circumstance full of danger.

Warren remained interested in “Modern Times” to his death. Although no longer connected with the community in any capacity, he was convinced that there was more to it than its critics had seen. Although begun as an experiment, he was pleased to see it still surviving when moved to comment upon it in 1872. Not revealing the source of his in-formation, he remarked that the village was “a very pretty one, improving faster than any one in the neighborhood.” After a recital of its increased physical attractions, he revealed his knowledge that the name had been changed. Since the very mention of “Modern Times” had often been a cause of provocation, now, he remarked “the annoyance from that source is at an end.”104 He did not indicate to his readers that the economic aspects of his internationally-known community were no longer of significance.

Codman, who was to become the patriarch of the community and the last survivor of its early folk, was inclined to be critical of Warren. He located part of the failure to achieve greater prominence to Warren’s poor qualities as a leader. He pointed up the latter’s hesitancy and lack of command as a public speaker, his timidity and distaste for wrangling and discussion, and his general retiring nature. Warren “had no magnetic qualities so needful in persuasion of gaining converts,” Codman asserted; “if he had had the gift or art of leadership, the fortune of this village . . . would have been different.” Yet all was not gloom from Codman’s point of view. His testimonial to the worth of “Modern Times” in his own “History” is unmatched in its positive quality:105

As an Equity Village, ‘twas a success as far as it went, and in its practical working no flaws were found in the principles as formulated by Mr. Warren. Nor were the principles ever successfully challenged. . . . None of us had the desire for riches. Equity was the ruling motive. That was what we were here to establish. Our aim was to show, by example, that better conditions for living were possible,—that Equity could be made actual, and that living could be made worth while. We may have been speculators in morality, but not in the land or its products. From the standpoint of worldly ambition, we failed, yet . . . we had . . . the cheering hope that our lives had not been entirely for self—that our social experiment might be a factor in the moralization of humanity, and that we had assisted in keeping alive the aspirations of social progress.

A few of the community people were still living in Brentwood after the turn of the century, with the pleasant external features of the town and the coöperative tendencies the primary attractions. However the buildings of the original settlement had for the most part long disappeared. Scarcely a physical vestige of “Modern Times” was to survive into the twentieth century.106

“Modern Times” as an experiment in practical anarchism is not easily evaluated. In a sociological sense, it is significant that no account, even including those of critics, has ever made mention of the presence at any time of crime as a community problem. The lack of disorder or violence in the absence of constituted authority for this extended period is a challenge to promoters of the widespread belief that organized society on any level without such formality is doomed to chaos. The modest size undoubtedly must be taken into consideration of this particular problem, however.

Indictments of the Warrenite settlement have usually concentrated on the non-coercive attitude toward its eccentrics and the lower material standard of living as compared with nearby New York City. From the point of view that institutions and attitudes of a particular group are more correctly judged with relation to their impact upon that group than upon the outside, neither of these contentions are particularly relevant. Adherents to Warren’s assertion that group opinion determined the actual operation of a community, individual behavior at “Modern Times” was usually evaluated in the same terms, an essential corollary to a type of life founded upon unconditional respect for individual personality. As an old resident explained, the passive boycott became the principal weapon utilized against undesirables, a device of undisputed quality in their practical experience:107

When we wish to rid ourselves of unpleasant persons, we simply let them alone. We buy nothing of them, sell them nothing, exchange no words with them—in short, by establishing a complete system of nonintercourse with them, we show them unmistakably that they are not wanted here, and they usually go away of their own accord.

A judgment of relative material prosperity is similarly of not especial consequence. No evidence exists to warrant the belief that the colonists expected to become wealthy or even well-to-do, while the statements of the colonists point to other factors, ranging from the expectation of merely proving theories in practice to the achievement of deliberate functional poverty, with its attendant sense of fulfillment. It is as planned retreats from the vitiating influences of city life that “Modern Times” and “Utopia” are of potential interest to modern proponents of decentralization. As an interlude in American social history the story of these towns stands apart from that of its cousins.

 

___________

108.  The word “socialism” meant many things to different persons in the mid-nineteenth century as it has continued to do in our own time. Albert Brisbane, one of the great intellectuals of the Fourierite group, evinced considerable admiration for the French anarchist Proudhon, at one time declaring that he was the beginner of “modern Socialism.” Redelia Brisbane, Albert Brisbane, 292-294. The continuing expansion of the definition of socialism in the present time can be seen for example in James Burnham, The Managerial Revolution (New York, 1941), Chapters IX, XIV and XV, and Lawrence Dennis, The Dynamics of War and Revolution (New York, 1940), xx-xxxi. See Introduction, Note 1.

109.  From the point of view of anarchists, the significance of Considérant as a propagandist in the socialist cause has been singularly overlooked. See especially Chapter X, “The Origin of the ‘Manifesto of the Communist Party,”’ in W. Tcherkesoff, Pages of Socialist History (New York, 1902), 55-66, for an interesting comparison of the Marxian document with Considérante Principes du Socialisms Manifeste de la Democratic au Dixneuviéme Siedcle, first published in Paris in 1843. Tcherkesoff here presents the anarchist case in accusing Marx and Engels of extensive plagiarism from Considérant. Using the parallel text method, Tcherkesoff finds Marx guilty of paraphrasing numerous passages and retaining the form and titles of a number of the same chapters. An interesting interpretation of the Considérant-Marx matter can be found in Max Nomad, Apostles of Revolution (London, 1939), 90-91.

110.  In a contemporary observation Warren remarked, “The average duration of the experiments of community of property and of the Fourierist Phalanxes is about two years, or two and a half.” Practical Details, 89. See also the short objective summary of Fourierite activity in Tyler, Freedom’s Ferment, 217-220.

111.  Practical Details, 57.

112.  Practical Details, 93-94; Warren to Maria and Thomas Varney, February 27, 1847, in Practical Details, 111; Nettlau, Der Vorfrühling, 110.

113.  John Humphrey Noyes, the first chronicler of the happenings following the collapse of the Clermont Phalanx, misinterpreted sources and is responsible for contributing the impression that this small community group was the nucleus of the individualist colony, which developed independently a few months later.

114.  According to Noyes’ account the community began in September, while Warren set the date of the laying out of the town in July. The Harbinger, October 2, 1847, quoted in Noyes, American Socialisms, 374-375; Warren, Practical Applications, 9.

115.  Peaceful Revolutionist, II (May, 1848), 4; Periodical Letter, II, 42-43.

116.  Peaceful Revolutionist, II (May, 1848), 16.

117.  The date given for the renewal of publication stated by Noyes as 1845 is obviously in error, in view of the fact that the colony did not start until two years later. The mistake has been perpetuated by anarchist bibliographers ever since, facilitated by the fact that issues of the paper are particularly rare. See Noyes, American Socialisms, 98-99; Stammhammer, Bibliographie, II, 345; Nettlau, Bibliographie, 6.

118.  E. G. Cubberley to Josiah Warren, April 10, 1848, in Peaceful Revolutionist, II (May, 1848), 10-11.

119.  Peaceful Revolutionist, II (May, 1848), 8-9.

120.  Witness Warren’s humor on this point: “Straws are often better to show which way the wind blows than the most labored invention. I cannot give a better sign of progress, than that a store-o-crat in the neighborhood says we ‘must be stopped.’ I suppose he has heard of Calicoes being sold here on the Cost principle for eleven cents a yard similar in quality to those often sold for twenty cents. It seems that his public spirit has taken the alarm—he cannot permit the public to be so imposed on; threatens us with law (for the protection of person and property) on account of issuing Labor Notes as a circulating medium.” Peaceful Revolutionist, II (May, 1848), 11.

121.  Peaceful Revolutionist, II (May, 1848), 5. The substance of this quotation may be found under “A Peep Into Utopia,” in Noyes, American Socialisms, 99, with source not indicated. There are over twenty errors in transmission if reproduction is from the material first printed in the contemporary Peaceful Revolutionist. This issue contained other materials besides community affairs. Warren commented favorably on the passage in New York and elsewhere of statutes guaranteeing women personal property rights independent of their husbands. He also wrote an extended commentary headed “Revolution” in which were summarized his attitudes toward the wave of political revolution then sweeping Europe, which he looked upon with sympathy but felt sure would “end in defeat and disappointment.”

122.  See Warren’s manuscript notebook “D” for entry dated August 18, 1848, while in Boston. Warren remained here until the latter part of April, 1849, lecturing upon various phases of the principles in practice at “Utopia.” See note 26, below.

123.  Senter was a resident of the community, producing the new edition in Warren’s absence in February, 1848, before joining Warren in the spring. The two protagonists returned to “Utopia” in May of the same year, after conducting a lecture tour which included Pittsburgh. Boston Investigator, March 7, May 16, 1849.

The 1849 edition of Equitable Commerce contained facsimiles of the new labor notes calling for alternative redemption in 20 pounds of corn per hour, probably the first instance of the revelation of this new arrangement to the general public.

124.  Stephen Pearl Andrews, The Science of Society, (No. 2. Cost the Limit of Price: A Scientific Measure of Honesty in Trade, as One of the Fundamental Principles of the Social Problem), 159-161.

125.  Geared for an economy built upon individual craftsmen, primarily, the system did not imitate the communal plans even though it functioned on a cost exchange basis. The superior worker had the opportunity of receiving more hours for less, or he might, on the other hand, choose the increased leisure resulting from his having to work less.

126.  Article “Triallville (sic) and Modern Times,” in Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal, XVIII (December 18, 1852), 396.

127.  See letter from E. G. Cubberley describing the operation of the community in Periodical Letter, I, 74. He spoke of the place as “Trialville,” the name by which interested observers in England knew it. The names of other residents as recorded by Warren were George Prescott, William Long, Henry

      B. Lyon, Martin Poor, Thomas Vater, a Mr. Francis and a Mr. Hemphill. Several others were designated by the initial of the family name only. Practical Applications, 11-16.

128.  Periodical Letter, II, 46. This represented an increase of fourteen buildings since late 1849. Practical Applications, 13.

129.  Warren favored migration into Illinois, but in groups so as to be able to bring the cost economy with them and thus avoid the three principal sources of exploitation colonists faced, land speculation, interest and lack of an available market. The real reason for the failure of the town to expand, he later related, was the fact that the lands surrounding the original settlement were in the hands of speculators who held out for such high prices that most of the early settlers left as a unit for Minnesota, after cheap land was opened up in this area. Their actual destination was never revealed. Practical Applications, 15; Periodical Letter, II, 42.

130.  See note 31, Introduction.

131.  See letters from E. G. Cubberley in The Word, III (May, 1874), 3; (September, 1874), 3; (June, 1875), 3.

132.  Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly, September 9, 1871; The Word, II (July, 1873), 4.

133.  Warren’s lecture series on the workings of “equitable commerce” lasted through most of the winter of 1849. See notices and reports in Boston Investigator, January 17, January 24, February 7, February 14, February 21, February 28, March 21, 1849. The New Harmony tax and census records for 1849 list both Warren and his wife as residents of the town. See also the letter Warren addressed to friends in the East from New Harmony on August 26, 1849, in Boston Investigator, September 25, 1849.

134.  In a letter to John Sullivan Dwight, Greene, writing in January, 1850, mentioned a petition to the Massachusetts General Court for permission to establish a mutual bank, which was signed by Warren, among others.

135.  Warren’s lecture style differed little whether speaking before large or small groups. Primarily consisting of detailed answers to questions from the audience, it was of little effectiveness on the larger scale. A small manuscript notebook containing concisely-worded definitions to which he made recourse on the lecture platform is in the Warren MSS. in the Labadie Collection.

136. Jewett was Librarian of the Smithsonian Institution from 1849 to 1854. Warren’s process was employed to print its first centralized catalog of books, the Catalog of the Library of Congress. Chapter 1. Ancient History Complete to January, 1854. See Joseph Borome, Charles Coffin Jewett (Chicago, 1951); Warren to Andrews, October 8, October 12, October 20, 1850 (from Boston); March 12 (?), March 15, April 1, June 4, 1851 (from Washington), in Baskette Collection. Warren was paid $650 for the right to use his stereotypy.

137.  Equitable Commerce, 67.

138.  Warren was acquainted with the George Henry Evans associates through the pages of their periodical Young America, and especially with Lewis Masquerier, a former Owenite whom he admired and respected, but with whom he disagreed in the matter of locating authority. Masquerier later substantiated Warren’s stand, declaring that land reform was an impossibility until “officialdom” was eliminated. Another of Warren’s acquaintances was Joshua K. Ingalls, another land reformer of the same group, with whom he engaged in discussions on economics, especially the nature of interest. Ingalls also joined the fringes of the anarchist camp in the post-Civil War period. Warren to Maria and Thomas Varney, February 7, 1847, in Practical Details, 102-103; Lewis Masquerier, Sociology: or, the Reconstruction of Society, Government and Property, 73, 87-88; Joshua K. Ingalls, Reminiscences of an Octogenarian in the Fields of Industrial and Social Reform, 51.

139.  An excellent account of the circumstances resulting in the choice of Long Island as the place of location, by a contemporary and participant, is that of Thomas L. Nichols, Forty Years of American Life, II, 36. Nichols and his talented wife took part in several reforms in the first half of the nineteenth century, finally becoming converts to Roman Catholicism and emigrating to England, where the above work was published. For their activities see Bertha-Monica Stearns, “Two Forgotten New England Reformers,” in New England Quarterly, VI (March, 1933), 59-84.

140.  Warren to Andrews, January 5, 1851, Warren MSS., Workingmen’s Institute Library. See also the article by Max Nettlau, “Anarchism in England Fifty Years Ago,” in Liberty, XV (February, 1906), 46, which quotes from a letter to the London Leader, September 6, 1851, giving details of a lecture by Andrews before the Fourierist North American Phalanx in New Jersey in February of that year, stating that the land on Long Island had at that time been secured and that the community was about to start. Letter signed “M” and written March 4, 1851.

141.  Warren, Practical Details, preface, vi. This preface was written by Andrews, and appeared in both the 1852 and 1854 editions without changes. It does not appear that Warren was on the scene when the “beginning” occurred, since he was in Washington working with Jewett at the Smithsonian Institution, and wrote letters to Andrews dated March 15 and April 1 from Washington (in Baskette Collection). In the first of these, Warren wrote, “I have finally come to the conclusion that I could not in any way accomplish as much in perhaps years as I could in weeks or months with you, and therefore have determined to come immediately to N.Y., i.e., Modern Times, build me a domicil, and then extend outwards according to my means for a few weeks perhaps months before I go West, making M.T. the head quarters for the Typography.” It would seem that at this point Warren had ideas of returning to the Ohio community to live, using “Modern Times” as a kind of eastern base for business purposes. In his letter of April 1, he told Andrews he was using the money he was getting from the Smithsonian Institution for his stereotypy to buy the remaining unsold lots at “Utopia,” and it is not until April 20, 1851 that a letter to Andrews definitely places Warren at Modern Times. At the present time “Modern Times,” or Brentwood, as the community has been known for over 85 years, is 26.2 miles from the city line of New York and 42.8 miles from New York’s Pennsylvania Station in railway mileage.

142.  One of the most curious and valuable of the previously unused documents relating to the history of the Warrenite community on Long Island is Charles A. Codman, “History of the City of Modern Times,” an unpublished manuscript of 23 large sheets, undated and unpaginated, closely handwritten in pencil. Two typewritten copies and the crumbling original are in the collection of “Modern Times” material in the Suffolk County Historical Society building in Riverhead, L.I. The authenticity of this document has been attested to by Dr. William H. Ross of Brentwood, a practicing physician in the community for well over half a century and a resident since 1890. Dr. Ross became acquainted with Codman at this time, and their friendship continued until the latter’s death in 1911. As Codman’s literary executor, Dr. Ross is responsible for the deposition of this manuscript and others relating to the community at Riverhead. It is the opinion of Dr. Ross that the Codman account was written sometime during the mid-1880’s, as it was already in existence when he first came to Brentwood.

143.  The alleys were supposed to have been twelve feet wide but were probably somewhat larger, since the “acre” lots as disposed to prospective settlers were reduced to 200 foot frontages, leaving a noticeable discrepancy. A map of “Modern Times” dated January 22, 1859 is located in Riverhead, but it is a surveyor’s map, showing only the town blocks and not the various properties.

144.  Practical Details, preface, vi-vii. This is a meticulous account of the land policy at “Modern Times,” which can be supplemented by that of Henry Edger, whose letter to the London Leader, March 27, 1852, is reprinted in Richmond L. Hawkins, Positivism in the United States (1853-1861), 115. This letter, written from Williamsburg, New York, November 2, 1851, corroborates much of the material written by Andrews, and appears to be for the most part a re-wording of the first work cited above. In view of the fact that Edger became a convert to “Modern Times” through Andrews’ influence, it is highly probable that it was as a result of the latter’s published works, primarily. Nettlau, who first used this letter in 1906, gives the date as November 21, 1851.

145.  Periodical Letter, I, 98-99.

146.  Practical Details, preface, vii; Periodical Letter, I, 71.

147.  Practical Details, preface, above.

148.  A recent work of value to students of “Modern Times” is Verne Dyson, A Century of Brentwood. Although the chapters devoted to the radical colony and its personalities lack organization and integration, much material of genealogical and antiquarian interest is available for the first time in this volume. Since this study is concerned primarily with “Modern Times” and its relation to Josiah Warren, it varies in interpretation with the above work, which is written from the point of departure of local history.

149.  Periodical Letter, I, 34-35. Some discrepancy exists in accounts as to the actual price paid for land at “Modern Times.” In this issue of the Periodical Letter, written in August, 1854, Warren said that the cost came to approximately $22, after all charges had been added. For additional material on the soil and growing conditions of the area consult William H. Ross, “A Study of the Climate of Long Island,” in Brooklyn Medical Journal, March, 1904, reprinted as a 14 page pamphlet. For Moore see editorial “‘The Rural New-Yorker—1850-1950,” in The Rural New-Yorker, C (January 7, 1950), 64.

150.  For the origins of Thompson’s Station, see Dyson, Century of Brentwood, 11-12.

151.  Warren to Andrews, April 26, 1851, Warren MSS., Workingmen’s Institute; Edger to London Leader, November 2, 1851, in Hawkins, Positivism, 115.

152.  Edger to London Leader, June 8, 1853, in Hawkins, Positivism 117; Nichols, Forty Years, II, 41. The soil and climate of the area have proved especially congenial to growth of trees. Thirty different varieties of evergreens alone exist in Brentwood today.

153.  Noyes, American Socialisms, quotes the following charming aside as recorded by A. J. MacDonald in a conversation with a resident in the latter part of 1853: “. . . many of our members are forced to go out into the world to earn what people call money. . . .,” 100. The dependence was lessened for a time, but returned with greater urgency during the Civil War.

154.  Edger to London Leader, June 8, 1853, in Hawkins, Positivism, above.

155.  John K. Winkler and Walter Bromberg, Mind Explorers (New York, 1939), 33-34.

156.  It is considered today that Andrews’ work had influence among anarchists in Germany and Spain as well as America. A German translation, Die Wissenschaft von der Gesellschaft, by Mathilde Kriege and Wilhelm Russbüldt, appeared in Berlin in 1904. There are also evidences of Andrews’ impact on the Spaniard Francisco Pi y Margall. Pi y Margall, although not an anarchist, has had high repute among Spanish anarchists, and his book La Reaction y la Revolution (Madrid, 1854), drawn partially from The Science of Society, was reprinted in the anarchist lists of La Revista Bianca and circulated all over Spain. See Gerald Brenan, The Spanish Labyrinth: An Account of the Social and Political Background of the Civil War (New York, 1943), 358.

157.  The entire controversy is reprinted in Andrews, Science of Society, 1888 edition, 153-165. Ripley was in full accord with Warren’s Sovereignty of the Individual concept, although claiming that Channing, Henry James and Theodore Parker originally propounded it. Even if Greeley was considered an opponent of the community, Codman declared that he purchased lots there, but did not mention the date. See article “Red Owl Cottage Hermit,” in Brooklyn Times, July 29, 1893.

158.  Periodical Letter, I, 86. Warren apparently considered Horace Greeley primarily responsible for the attack. In a letter to Stephen Pearl Andrews, Warren commented, “It is worthy of note that the only one who has denied the soundness of Cost as the limit of Price is the Editor of the most prominent reform paper in America. What is this prominence for?” Warren to Andrews, July 1, 1852, Baskette Collection.

159.  See for instance the description in Octavius B. Frothingham, George Ripley (Boston, 1882), 125-130, for interesting parallels.

160.  Nichols, Forty Years, II, 41-42.

161.  Modern treatments stress this aspect; see for example Grace Adams and Edward Hutter, The Mad Forties.

162.  Fish, Rise of the Common Man, 152-154.

163.  Practical Details, preface, viii.

164.  Nichols was a Fourierite socialist, a fact which he thought had to be qualified by informing the public that he was also attached to the extremely individualistic convictions which helped comprise spiritualism. Stearns, “Two Forgotten Reformers,” 77; Noyes, American Socialism, 93.

165.  See especially Nichols’ article “The Future of Women,” in The Art of Living, II (July, 1852), 50. Nichols, a trained physician, was also interested in water cure therapy.

166.  The entire body of correspondence of the three participants, including dis-patches which Andrews claimed were suppressed by the Tribune, was gathered and published posthumously in one volume under the title Love, Marriage and Divorce, and the Sovereignty of the Individual. A Discussion Between Henry James, Horace Greeley and Stephen Pearl Andrews, in 1889.

167.  De Witt Upson to Josiah Warren, April 4, 1854, Warren MSS., Labadie Collection.

168.  Periodical Letter, I, 69.

169.  See note 21, above. Warren’s brief account titled “A Few Words to the Pioneers” involved him in an acrimonious argument with some of the more aggressive spirits of the Victoria Woodhull coterie, who accused him of supporting their enemies when it was reprinted at the height of the first wave of Comstock Law prosecutions in 1871.

170.  Warren’s wife, also a spiritualist, remained in contact with Nichols while at home in New Harmony after the latter had gone to Cincinnati in 1855, subscribing to the new organ of the protagonists of spiritualism, women’s rights and health experimentation, Nichols’ Monthly. Caroline Cutter Warren to Josiah Warren, June 27, August 26, 1855, Warren MSS., Labadie Collection.

171.  William S. Heywood, ed., Autobiography of Adin Ballou, 401.

172.  Ballou, History of Hopedale Community, 246.

173.  Ballou, Practical Christian Socialism, 623.

174.  The statement was an obvious contradiction in terms to the adherents of spiritual affinity, yet assumed to be synonymous by Ballou and most others at the time, one of the principal reasons for Warren’s objection to the vigor of the campaign being carried on by Nichols. Ballou, Practical Christian Socialism, 624. The late Ammon Hennacy twitted “free love” smears by inquiring of the makers of such charges if they preferred “bought love.”

175.  Periodical Letter, I, 113.

176.  Edger was born January 22, 1820, in Chelwood Gate parish of Fletching, Sussex, England. He filed a declaration of intention of American citizenship on April 23, 1851, and became naturalized November 18, 1861. He died at Versailles, France, April 18, 1888. Henry Edger, Auguste Comte and the Middle Ages, 115; Jorge Lagarrigue, ed., Lettres d’Auguste Comte, jondateur de la religion universelle et premier grandeprètre de l’humanité à Henry Edger et à John Metcalfe . . ., vi.

177.  Edger to London Leader, July 19, 1851, cited in Nettlau, “Anarchism,” 46.

178.  In March, 1854, Edger wrote a letter to the London Leader which was published on July 22, 1854, indicating for the first time that he was now a permanent resident of the colony.

179.  Edger wrote sixteen letters to Comte between 1854 and 1857 which contain much information about “Modern Times.”

180.  Auguste Comte, Appel aux Conservateurs (Paris, 1855), 74-80; Georges Dumas, “Auguste Comte et les Jesuites,” in Revue de Paris, V (October, 1898), 557-568; John K. Ingram, Passages from the Letters of Auguste Comte, 145; Hawkins, Positivism, 160, 181. A valuable summary of positivism is that of Alexander Goldenweiser in the article “Social Evolution,” in Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, V, 657.

181.  Comte to Edger, July 21, 1855, November 20, 1856, in Letters, 23, 51; Nettlau, “Anarchism,” 48.

182.  Edger to Comte, July 21, 1854, in Hawkins, Positivism, 133.

183.  Hawkins, Positivism, 165.

184.  Edger to Comte, July 21, November 3, 1854; February 5, 1855, in Haw-kins, Positivism, 134, 143, 147.

185.  Edger to Comte, March 3, 1856, in Hawkins, Positivism, 170-171.

186.  Edger to Comte, March 8, 1857, in Hawkins, Positivism, 188.

187.  Lagarrigue, ed., Lettres, 10; Ingram, Passages, 147-148; Hawkins, Positivism, 145. Warren commented on Comte’s views in the September, 1857 Periodical Letter.

188.  Lagarrigue, ed., Lettres, 30-31; Ingram, Passages, above; Hawkins, Positivism, 167.

189.  Hawkins, Positivism, 198.

190.  Brentwood records indicate that the name was officially adopted September 7, 1864, although it was nearly a decade before it became generally used. Edger remained for some time, writing for The Index and for Benjamin R. Tucker’s Radical Review. See for instance his articles “Ritualism,” in The Index, III, 194-195; “The Need of a Priesthood,” in The Index, IV, 347348. On the naming of Brentwood, see Codman, “Modern Times.”

191.  Periodical Letter, I, 35.

192.  The tenacity of the background of the coöperative boardinghouses of the Rappites and New Harmony under Robert Owen is seen here. Warren was convinced that such activities, as well as dairies, laundries, and schools run on similar plans would find eventual preference among those who appreciated lowered costs and elimination of labor. Equitable Commerce, 39-40. A brief description of the boarding houses at New Harmony in the spring of 1826 is in Nicholson, The Hoosiers, 113. For Orvis see also the report from Brentwood by Minnie Morse, niece of the inventor of the telegraph, in New York Herald, July 17, 1904.

193.  For full title see Introduction, note 31.

194.  Periodical Letter, I, 126-127; II, 38-39, 49; I, 2nd. series, 113.

195.  Evans stated the case rather simply in an open letter to Smith in the Working Man’s Advocate of July 6, 1844; “I was formerly, like yourself, sir, a very warm advocate of the abolition of slavery. This was before I saw that there was white slavery. Since I saw this, I have materially changed my views as to the manner of abolishing negro slavery. I see now clearly, I think, that to give the landless black the privilege of changing masters now possessed by the landless white would hardly be a benefit to him in exchange for his surety of support in sickness and old age, although he is in a favorable climate. If the southern form of slavery existed at the north, I should say the black would be a great loser in such a change.” Commons, Documentary History, VII, 356. The exchange of views between Evans and Smith is reprinted from the Working Man’s Advocate, July 6, July 27, and August 17, 1844, in Commons, Documentary History, VII, 352-364.

196.  “The articles of association being put down in words are subject to different interpretations and here is collision—then comes division into majority and minority—the majority prevail—the minority rebel—and here is war and weakness! This exactly the origin of the present political confusion of the dis-United States of America: in the meantime the objects professedly aimed at by our political organization as a nation are entirely repudiated . . .” Periodical Letter, I, 2nd. series, 102. Warren wrote this comment in December, 1857, while discussing the Kansas controversy.

197.  Warren, a disbeliever in voting, was convinced that a form of society which depended upon the largest vote to decide its governor was “radically defective and unfit,” and would inevitably result in a large segment of people being ruled against their wills. Elections, he felt, were but a “series of revolutions.” Periodical Letter, I, 127.

198.  Warren was referring at this point to the provisions for the recapture of runaway slaves, not alleging that the institution itself was established by positive law. The common law theory used to justify the existence of slavery was regarded as preposterous by Warren and later anarchists. The major propositions of Warren’s system, personal inviolability and right to the full total of one’s production, made belief in possession of another as property untenable. For other remarks on slavery by Warren see Periodical Letter, II, 40, 50-51; I, 2nd. series, 104.

199.  Warren’s wife, still in New Harmony, occasionally wrote encouraging him to abandon his activities in the East and return. Caroline Cutter Warren to Josiah Warren, May 27, June 27, 1855.

200.  Warren spent the early part of 1855 in Boston as well, while engaged in promoting the use of his stereotyping process. Caroline Cutter Warren to Josiah Warren, January 10, January 26, 1855.

201.  For further on the “Boston Group” see Codman, “History of Modern Times”; G. B. Studley to William H. Ross, July 11, 1930, both in Modern Times papers at Suffolk County Historical Society. Codman made a living as a maker of paper and wooden boxes. No evidence exists of a paper box factory supposedly operated by Linton, as mentioned by Bailie in his Josiah Warren. Codman specifically mentioned that there was no factory or industrial establishment there at any time, and that no source of power was present to make such a development possible. Thus such manufactures as were produced in the colony were the product of individual craftsmen. See addresses by Codman and Linton in 1855—Fifty Years After at Brentwood, Long Island, May 30, 1905. The contents of this pamphlet were published in the Brooklyn Standard Union, June 4, 1905.

202.  Labor notes, approximately the size of current federal paper money, for one and two hours labor, are preserved in the Suffolk County Historical Society. Signed by Codman and P. I. Blacker, they proposed to be payable also in two other standards, eight pounds of corn per hour or ten cents in “U.S. coin, with consent of the holder.” These are dated 1857 and show obvious signs of having circulated as currency, as does the note in the Work-ingmen’s Institute Library at New Harmony, used fifteen years before. Codman, listed as a manufacturer of paper boxes, promised to pay in sign painting, Blacker in shoemaking. Blacker’s limit of issue was fifty hours, Cod-man’s, one hundred. Warren’s name appears on the notes as printer.

203.  “The village,” Conway reported, “consisted of about fifty cottages, neat and cheerful in their green and white, nearly all with well-tilled gardens.” Conway, Autobiography, Memories and Experiences, I, 266.

204.  Conway, “Modern Times, New York,” in The Fortnightly Review, I (July, 1865), 425. Conway noticed nothing extraordinary about the conduct of the residents other than a tendency toward reticence concerning each other’s private affairs, which appeared to him to have grown out of the absence of traditional rules of social conduct and the freedom in marriage relationships.

205.  For the origins of the school system at “Modern Times” see Dyson, Century of Brentwood, 90-92. Although outside influences had considerable responsibility in establishing the school, the overall impact of the community people was easily observed. Warren reported that only primary education was provided at first, supported by individual subscription. Each parent paid in proportion to the number of his children taught. Music and dancing were taught, along with formal subjects. Sex education and organized play became integral parts of the educative process during this early period, which set the system apart from that of nearby towns. Parental supervision and authority were not relaxed in proportion to the greater degree of social freedom enjoyed by the adults. Along with the early manual training, the objective was the development of a sense of responsibility at as early an age as appeared advisable; “. . . until they can regulate themselves they should be subject to some eye,” Warren declared. Periodical Letter, I, 88; Noyes, American Socialisms, 100.

206.  Warren, Modern Education, 2. The stress on education was a life-long concern; “one well directed effort to promote an innocent amusement is worth two sermons against pernicious ones,” summed up his philosophy on the place of teaching the use of leisure time. Warren, A New System of Musical Notation, 13.

207.  Conway believed that part of the group went to South America. Auto-biography, I, 268. See Chapter IV, note 63. Although many were opposed to war, later residents of Brentwood took pride in their fifteen members in the Union army.

208.  Ellis, a clergyman, visited “Modern Times” in 1869.

209.  Ellis, Free Love and Its Votaries; or, American Socialism Unmasked, 395396. Warren’s views on marriage while at “Modern Times” were unequivocal: “From twenty-nine years’ constant contact with this subject, as one of the greatest of human interests to be ameliorated, I am entirely satisfied that no systematic or extensive changes can be suddenly made in the Marriage relations with safety.” Periodical Letter, I (July, 1854), 13.

210.  Ellis, Free Love, 402.

211.  Practical Applications, 21.

212.  Codman, “History of Modern Times.”

213.  Warren’s time store and apprentice shop had been demolished by 1890, and a like fate befell the community building, center of social affairs. A portion of the old school remains, but all other buildings have been destroyed, with a fine lack of historical feeling, in contrast to the meticulous preservation of New Harmony community sites in Indiana.

214.  Ellis, Free Love, 398. Warren had great faith in the policy of aloofness toward undesirables. “It is a very repugnant undertaking,” he wrote in 1855, “to point out this or that person to the community as a quack or an imposter, a fool or a fanatic, a cheat or a swindler; . . . we have no possible means of excluding such gentry from the Equity villages, . . . the only hope is in curing them by not giving them power or confidence.” Periodical Letter, I, 101.

[Readers of the first edition of this book who have also had a wide acquaintance with science fiction have repeatedly pointed out the uncanny similarity between the economic structure and socio-political behavior of “Modern Times” and the space colony of unorganizable individualists described by Eric Frank Russell in his delightful and engaging novel, The Great Explosion. (See for example the Pyramid Books paperback edition, New York, 1963).]

• 1It has been evident to thoughtful observers for more than two generations that the words “anarchist,” “anarchism,” and “anarchy” have been used so loosely by writers and the general public alike that they have practically ceased to have any definite meaning. The problem here is similar to that existing in many other cases where abstract terms or generalizations having no or little substance have been overused or misused. Nor has the use of these terms by scholars tended to promote any greater degree of understanding. In too many cases the tendency has been to resemble the weaknesses of the general observer. Here the situation has been usually created by the repeated interpretation of expressions of hostility to the status quo as evidence of anarchist thought.
• 2It has been evident to thoughtful observers for more than two generations that the words “anarchist,” “anarchism,” and “anarchy” have been used so loosely by writers and the general public alike that they have practically ceased to have any definite meaning. The problem here is similar to that existing in many other cases where abstract terms or generalizations having no or little substance have been overused or misused. Nor has the use of these terms by scholars tended to promote any greater degree of understanding. In too many cases the tendency has been to resemble the weaknesses of the general observer. Here the situation has been usually created by the repeated interpretation of expressions of hostility to the status quo as evidence of anarchist thought.
• 3The idea has long been prevalent that violent conduct is characteristic of anarchists, and that anarchism is a doctrine of destruction. There exists little justification for such a stand, in actuality. In addition, the rejection of one particular variety of authority in favor of its replacement by another finds continual identification with anarchism, while social philosophies which are utterly opposed to it are on occasion labeled “anarchistic.” This merely adds to the already large amount of confusion existing on the subject, setting up extremely vague limitations and permitting the inclusion of many elements which are quite controversial.
• 4Since 1880 and thereabouts people have almost universally thought of anarchists in terms of violence and conspiracy. The result has been the regarding of anarchist literature as a product of a handful of criminals. In Europe the advent of this revolutionary movement was accompanied by a number of sensational acts which led to the identification of anarchism with socially pathological developments. In the United States there have been similar implications, to the point where even governmental policy incorporated the layman’s conception of anarchism and anarchists. The definition of anarchism employed by the Department of Justice in modern times is essentially derived from this earlier period.
• 5Although the tendency to blame destruction of property and loss of life during industrial disputes on “agitators,” “doctrinaires,” and “communists” prevailed for some time previous to the celebrated Haymarket incident in Chicago in May, 1886, such predilections received a powerful stimulus from this event. The now-familiar stereotype of the black whiskered, bomb-throwing vandal came into being at this time and created a new political symbol which has been used to manipulate mass opinion with an impressive degree of success. As a consequence of this and other factors, anarchism became so tainted with diabolism that rational study of its place in American history has rarely taken place.
• 6Although the tendency to blame destruction of property and loss of life during industrial disputes on “agitators,” “doctrinaires,” and “communists” prevailed for some time previous to the celebrated Haymarket incident in Chicago in May, 1886, such predilections received a powerful stimulus from this event. The now-familiar stereotype of the black whiskered, bomb-throwing vandal came into being at this time and created a new political symbol which has been used to manipulate mass opinion with an impressive degree of success. As a consequence of this and other factors, anarchism became so tainted with diabolism that rational study of its place in American history has rarely taken place.
• 7The attempt to link these varied phenomena into a logical sequence has been undertaken by others as well, with less success. It now appears that the assumption that American anarchism stemmed from Puritan Antinomianism and was associated with the peculiar variety of resistance to the state found in the non-resistant and “no government” sentiments of the Garrison school of “Christian Anarchist” abolitionists is untenable. It is more probable that, rather than being a derivative of native American conditions, the real source of the anti-statist evidences observed in Antinomianism and other varieties of early colonial dissidence and unrest can be discovered in the radicalism, both religious and socio-economic, already developing in England before the times of Charles I, and which found expression through lower class spokesmen at the time of the English Civil War. Concerning other aspects of this matter, it can be argued quite effectively that the designation “Christian Anarchist” is really a contradiction in terms, and that religious rebellion along individualist lines can be interpreted as anarchism only under highly specialized circumstances. The rejection of one variety of religious authority in favor of its replacement by another can hardly be related to anarchism, which categorically rejects authority. In another connection, the interpretation of American anti-statism as an evolutionary process, passing from religious to economic spheres, is also open to serious objections. There is not only lack of continuity in influence, but no logical sequence in the elaboration of a program of propaganda. In searching the field it becomes more apparent that the elements of a radical movement with a fully developed propaganda structure can be found in one of the sub-areas only. It is the contention of this work that individualist anarchism can be seen to satisfy the requirements mentioned elsewhere. Not only is it the only part of the radical movement native to America with a propaganda, but it has depended on natives for its promotion. Furthermore, it is unique in that members of the group actually attempted under practical conditions to try out its theory.
• 8In the United States there seems to have been little notice of an extensive literature hostile to the state and its functions until after Haymarket. The dominant conception of anarchism after the violence in Chicago was in accord with the inflammatory utterances of the European-born revolutionaries now gathered in the several large Northern cities. Lack of attention had resulted in the failure to note that a serious split had been developing within the worldwide anarchist movement, and that various distinct elements could now be recognized.
• 9The semantic smokescreen raised up by the moral uproar here and overseas after Haymarket and a number of sensational assassinations in Europe covered over in the process the uncompromising stand taken by the American individualist anarchists, who deplored the use of force, or “direct action,” and asserted as before their traditional hope of the eventual adoption of noncoercive individualist equity as a result of education and rational conviction. Much of what they had to say had been propagated here for nearly a half century before there developed a competing body of beliefs put forward by followers of Bakunin and Kropotkin. In the form in which it appeared during the 80’s and 90’s, but especially as broadcast by Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman and other Russians after the turn of the century, it is possible to see emerging the full outlines of what has since become known as communist anarchism. It has since received its best statement by Italian and Spanish radicals. (Further examination of the famed Haymarket Germans suggests a serious question as to whether these men were not far closer to state socialism, actually, than anarchism.)
• 10The semantic smokescreen raised up by the moral uproar here and overseas after Haymarket and a number of sensational assassinations in Europe covered over in the process the uncompromising stand taken by the American individualist anarchists, who deplored the use of force, or “direct action,” and asserted as before their traditional hope of the eventual adoption of noncoercive individualist equity as a result of education and rational conviction. Much of what they had to say had been propagated here for nearly a half century before there developed a competing body of beliefs put forward by followers of Bakunin and Kropotkin. In the form in which it appeared during the 80’s and 90’s, but especially as broadcast by Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman and other Russians after the turn of the century, it is possible to see emerging the full outlines of what has since become known as communist anarchism. It has since received its best statement by Italian and Spanish radicals. (Further examination of the famed Haymarket Germans suggests a serious question as to whether these men were not far closer to state socialism, actually, than anarchism.)
• 11The two groups differed sharply on basic issues. The communist anarchists rejected private property, and taught the ideal of the collective autonomous commune. A portion of their number advocated the overthrow of the State by violence. The individualist anarchists held that the collective society in any form was an impossibility without the eventuality of authoritarianism, and ultimately, totalitarianism, and adhered resolutely to the concept of private property insofar as the term could be defined as the total product of a given individual’s labor, but not more broadly than this. They abandoned the idea of an equalitarian utopia, and worked for a world free from arbitrary restrictions on opportunity and legal privilege, which breakdowns they claimed “laissez faire” really produced. No other radical group denounced the prevailing system more vigorously than the spokesmen for individualist anarchism.
• 12The two groups differed sharply on basic issues. The communist anarchists rejected private property, and taught the ideal of the collective autonomous commune. A portion of their number advocated the overthrow of the State by violence. The individualist anarchists held that the collective society in any form was an impossibility without the eventuality of authoritarianism, and ultimately, totalitarianism, and adhered resolutely to the concept of private property insofar as the term could be defined as the total product of a given individual’s labor, but not more broadly than this. They abandoned the idea of an equalitarian utopia, and worked for a world free from arbitrary restrictions on opportunity and legal privilege, which breakdowns they claimed “laissez faire” really produced. No other radical group denounced the prevailing system more vigorously than the spokesmen for individualist anarchism.
• 13The individualist anarchists had no blueprint for the future of social organizations under conditions free from coercion. The direction to be taken by voluntary associations was left for the future, and no predictions of a static millennium filled their writing. The group had within their number adherents to a system of decentralized local communities of small size, and at the same time proponents of free associations of producers and consumers within large urban industrial centers. The best known of this group of native radicals, Josiah Warren, Lysander Spooner, Stephen Pearl Andrews, William B. Greene, Ezra Heywood, and Benjamin R. Tucker, came in for a measure of attention during the peak of the furor over radicalism reached at about the time of the Spanish-American War. But the greater part of the attention of the time was focussed on their German and Russian contemporaries, with whom they were already at variance in many respects. Those most familiar with the individualist suggestions for the solution of the currency, labor and other pressing problems dismissed them as the fulminations of a group of irresponsibles, dreamers and cranks. Their work along practical lines at an earlier time was practically unknown in any circles, and much of what they had to say later on was mostly forgotten when the stage was taken over by the Industrial Workers of the World, The Socialist Party and the First International.
• 14.  George Warren, “Josiah Warren,” 1. This brief biographical reminiscence of Warren by his only son is an unpublished manuscript written in Evansville, Indiana in 1893, apparently at the request of Lockwood, who was engaged in preparing his study of the New Harmony communities. See Warren MSS., Workingmen’s Institute, George B. Lockwood to George W. Warren, November 10, 1893. Many of the early dates mentioned in this manuscript have proven inaccurate.
• 15.  George Warren, “Josiah Warren,” above. This lamp was patented February 28, 1821, but Warren paid little attention to this matter after becoming part of the New Harmony community. Dictionary of American Biography, XIX, 483. See also note 80, below.
• 16.  The standard work on Owen’s life is Frank Podmore, Robert Owen, A Biography (2 vols. London, 1906). Other works of value are William L. Sargant, Robert Owen, and His Social Philosophy (London, 1860); Lloyd Jones, The Life, Times, and Labours of Robert Owen (2 vols. London, 1890); G. D. H. Cole, The Life of Robert Owen (London, 1930). Owen’s autobiography, The Life of Robert Owen by Himself (New York edition, 1920), is a valuable source.
• 17.  A brief, concise statement of Owen’s stand on this matter may be found in George Milton Janes, Who Should Have Wealth and Other Papers (Milwaukee, 1925), 48. Owen’s “Five Fundamental Facts of Human Nature” are reproduced by Podmore, Robert Owen, 481-482. Page citations are from the one volume edition (New York, 1910).
• 18.  Owen was born at Newtown, Montgomeryshire, Wales, on May 14, 1771. He purchased and began operating the mills at New Lanark in 1798. See the brief, approved biographical sketch in his periodical The New Moral World (London and Leeds, 1834-1845), I (November 1, 1834), 7. This publication was a continuation of The Crisis (London, 1832-1834), which is an extremely important source for the origin and early operations of the renowned Labor Exchanges. Other indispensable periodicals for material concerning Owen are Robert Owen’s Journal (London, 1850-1852), and Robert Owen’s Millennial Gazette (London, 1856-1858). The biography by Podmore contains the most adequate bibliography of Owen’s works, among the standard treatments, which may be supplemented by National Library of Wales, A Bibliography of Robert Owen, the Socialist 1771-1858 (Aberystwyth, Wales, 1914).
• 19.  A brief account stressing the accomplishments of the Rappites at New Harmony is Jacob Schneck and Richard Owen, The History of New Harmony, Ind. (Evansville, Ind., 1890). See also Lockwood, New Harmony Movement, 19-57; John S. Duss, George Rapp and His Associates (Indianapolis, 1914), an account by a specialist in Rappite history.
• 20.  Podmore, Robert Owen, 288; Lockwood, New Harmony Movement, 75; Robert Dale Owen, Threading My Way. Twenty-Seven Years of Autobiography (New York, 1874), 211. Owen claimed that the purchase price was $140,000. The New Harmony Gazette, II (August 15, 1827), 353.
• 21.  Owen’s brief stopover in Cincinnati on his way to New Harmony on December 9, 1824 did not include a speaking engagement there, according to his son William, who was with him on this journey. Joel W. Hiatt, ed., “Diary of William Owen from November 10, 1824, to April 20, 1825,” in Indiana Historical Society Publications, IV, 61. Owen left New Harmony January 7, 1825, and spoke in Cincinnati on his way to Washington where he addressed the House of Representatives in February and March. Hiatt, ed., “Diary,” 97. For further corroboration consult The Diaries of Donald Mac-Donald 1824-1826 (Indiana Historical Society Publications, vol. XIV) (Indianapolis, 1942), 236, 296.
• 22.  The name of the community was not decided upon at first, the space being left blank in the preamble. Warren’s suggestion that the association adopt the title “Commonwealth of New Harmony” was negatived, and William Owen’s motion that the space remain blank was carried. The name “New Harmony Community of Equality” was adopted February 5, 1826. See “Minutes of the Convention for Forming a Constitution for the Society of New Harmony held Jan. 25, 1826,” February 2, 1826, February 5, 1826. The preamble is reproduced in the minutes for February 1, 1826. In the valuation list prepared at the direction of the select committee on February 8, 1826, Warren and his family were assigned $169 per annum. Warren might have arrived in the spring of 1825. MacDonald reported that several families arrived at New Harmony from Cincinnati between April 13 and April 24, but did not mention Warren specifically. MacDonald Diaries, 292.
• 23.  “When I reached New Harmony, early in 1826, . . . I looked at everything with eyes of enthusiasm. . . . The evening gatherings too, delighted me . . . the weekly concert, with an excellent leader, Josiah Warren, and a performance of music . . . much beyond what I had expected in the backwoods . . .” Robert Dale Owen, “My Experiences of Community Life,” in Atlantic Monthly, XXXII (September, 1873), 338.
• 24.  The first entry of the Warren family in the account book of the community store is dated March 8, 1826. The family pass books have never been located, and constitute another Warren document of considerable interest for which search continues. For a description of the account books see William Pelham to William Creese Pelham, September 7, 1825, in Harlow Lindley, ed., Indiana as Seen by Early Travellers (Indiana Historical Collections, vol. Ill) (Indianapolis, 1916), 371.
• 25.  Warren MSS. notebook, Labadie Collection, University of Michigan, undated, unpaginated. This is another obscure Warren source, unrelated to the series of notebooks which are apparently in the nature of a diary, containing entries through June, 1873, and of which only one has so far been located. See note 13. For mention of the above document elsewhere, consult R. C. Stewart, “The Labadie Labor Collection,” in Michigan Alumnus Quarterly Review, LIII (May 10, 1947), 250.
• 26.  Periodical Letter, II (July, 1856), 55; Warren, Practical Details in Equitable Commerce, showing the workings in actual experiment, during a series of years, of the social principles expounded in the works called “Equitable Commerce” by the author of this and “The Science of Society,” by Stephen P. Andrews, 71, cited hereafter as Practical Details. A second edition from the same plates was published in 1854. Although this book was not published until 1852, some of the material existed in manuscript for twenty-five years before revision and release under the above title. For the most part, this latter work is the principal source of information concerning the decision to leave New Harmony and the events of the three years following. Any account of Warren’s early experiments in social reform is bound to rely upon it heavily.
• 27.  Warren’s views have been summarized adequately in Ely, Labor Movement, 238. A fuller treatment by Warren is contained in Periodical Letter, 2nd. series, I (December, 1856), 34.
• 28.  Periodical Letter, II (July, 1856), 55-56. Dr. Lyman O. Warren has raised some interesting points in speculating upon the intellectual origins of Josiah Warren’s unorthodox thinking. He has called attention to the observation of the famous philosopher George Santayana in his Persons and Places that the Brighton Warrens, of whom Josiah was a member, were “a dissentient family.” Santayana was a boyhood friend of the uncles of Dr. Warren. The record for independent intransigence appears to go back at least as far as his first American ancestors. John Warren of the Arbella is noted in Bond’s History of Watertown as having been arrested on one occasion for nonattendance at church and for harboring Quakers on another. Further investigation into the family prior to migration to America, itself an act of extraordinary self-assertion and independence, might establish a much longer record of nonconformism. A future biographer of Josiah Warren might well consider the pertinence of this durable tradition.
• 2928a. Jewett was Librarian of the Smithsonian Institution from 1849 to 1854. Warren’s process was employed to print its first centralized catalog of books, the Catalog of the Library of Congress. Chapter 1. Ancient History Complete to January, 1854. See Joseph Borome, Charles Coffin Jewett (Chicago, 1951); Warren to Andrews, October 8, October 12, October 20, 1850 (from Boston); March 12 (?), March 15, April 1, June 4, 1851 (from Washington), in Baskette Collection. Warren was paid $650 for the right to use his stereotypy.
• 30.  Six years after leaving New Harmony, Warren wrote, “It is the influence of surrounding circumstances which . . . divided society into rich and poor, which enables some to command and others unable to do otherwise than obey. It is the influence of circumstances which produces different classes in society, and that influence only, which divides men into different political parties and ranges them under different banners of religion. . . . It will be seen that this knowledge warrants us in making a critical examination into our own condition, and all the circumstances which have surrounded us from birth, to see whether they have been . . . such as are most favorable to our happiness, and it teaches us not to reverence or perpetuate bad circumstances simply because we are born under them. . . . This knowledge therefore lays a broad, rational and consistent foundation for unlimited improvement; . . .” The Peaceful Revolutionist, I (February 5, 1833), 5. This short-lived Warren periodical continues to be considered the first anarchist publication in existence.
• 31.  Warren MSS., Labadie Collection, undated entry in notebook. It is thought from the arrangement of the material that this notebook was intended as reference at impromptu meetings in private homes, where Warren was a more convincing speaker than he was on the public lecture platform.
• 32.  The idea of paper money representing a certain amount of labor rather than a certain precious commodity was held in common and developed separately by several radical economic thinkers in the first half of the nineteenth century as well. Besides Owen in England, similar conceptions on a different scale can be found in the writings of John Gray, A Lecture on Human Happiness (London, 1825); William Thompson, An Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth Most Conducive to Human Happiness (London, 1824; another edition, 1850); John Francis Bray, Labour’s Wrongs and Labour’s Remedy; or, the Age of Might and the Age of Right (Leeds, 1839). Johann Karl Rodbertus in Germany and Pierre Joseph Proudhon in France evolved similar monetary substitutions. Short summaries of their theories can be found in Edward C. K. Gonner, The Social Philosophy of Rodbertus (London, 1899); Dennis W. Brogan, Proudhon (London, 1934); Henry Cohen, Proudhon’s Solution of the Social Problem (New York, 1927). The simplicity of application of this idea by Warren is unique during a time confined almost entirely to theorizing about this matter.
• 33.  These were later published as a bound collection under this title. (Manchester, Eng. 1837). A contemporary edition appeared in London in 1813 under the title A New View of Society; or, Essays on the Principle of the Formation of the Human Character, with separate pagination.
• 34.  Consult Edger A. J. Johnson, Predecessors of Adam Smith (New York, 1937), Chapters XII-XIII, for a development of the background of the labor cost theory. Whether Warren was acquainted with the writings of Adam Smith is not known but unlikely. However Proudhon, developing a similar line of thought to Warren in a French environment, mentioned Smith, along with the Bible and Hegel as his three principal sources of inspiration. Zenker, Anarchism, 35.
• 35.  The following extract from the diary of William Owen, referring to his father’s visit in Kentucky on the way to New Harmony in the late fall of 1824, is of great interest in the effort to assign proper credit for the labor note idea: “We walked through the town-Mayesville [sic] and found a good front and a tolerable second street. Hunter and my father bought mits and Mr. Owen had a bantering conve[r]sation with the storekeeper regarding money and labor notes. He told us that a gallon of whisky, which will make twelve individuals quite drunk, can be bought for 12½ cents.” Hiatt, ed., “Diary of William Owen,” 61. Italics are the present writer’s.
• 36.  John R. Commons and Associates, A Documentary History of Industrial Society, V, 79.
• 37.  Practical Details, 75.
• 38.  It should be remembered that Warren’s continual use of the term “equitable commerce” occurred with the understanding that the word “commerce” was being used in its overall sense as the sum total of human activities and not merely economic considerations alone. There is no doubt that Warren believed that major reforms in the economic sphere were the most important, nevertheless.
• 39.  The first systematic and extended arrangement of Warren’s convictions was his Equitable Commerce: a new developement [sic] of principles for the harmonious adjustment and regulation of the pecuniary, intellectual and moral intercourse of mankind, proposed as elements of New Society (New Harmony, Ind., 1846), hereafter cited as Equitable Commerce.
• 40.  Ely, Labor Movement, 238; Warren, Practical Details, 13.
• 41.  An admirable summation of Warren’s philosophy of individualism is that of Thomas Low Nichols, Forty Years of American Life, II, 39. Nichols’ relations with Warren and the anarchists at “Modern Times” will be found in Chapter III.
• 42.  Warren, Practical Details, 13. Capitalized portions are Warren’s.
• 43.  Practical Details, above.
• 44.  Practical Details, 14.
• 45.  Practical Details, above.
• 46.  On his return to Cincinnati, Warren leased the tract of land bounded by Elm, John, Fifth and Ninth Streets from Nicholas Longworth for 99 years. His return of the lease to Longworth is anomalous, in view of the fact that he still conceived of land as a commodity and subject to purchase and sale. The loss of this tract as a bargaining weapon must have been keenly felt at the time consideration of a colony site was taking place. See George Warren, “Josiah Warren,” 2, for a summary of this curious incident.
• 47.  Practical Details, 14.
• 48.  The earliest proposal for the employment of labor notes in England similar to those which enjoyed widespread use in Warren’s Cincinnati store is that of the Brighton Co-Operative Benevolent Fund Association, in November, 1827, six months after their successful introduction in the Ohio pioneer venture. The operation of the store and the determination of the value of the labor notes differed slightly from that already functioning in America. One of the plates from which the English labor notes were printed is in the collection of the Workingmen’s Institute. See the description of the English plan in Podmore, Robert Owen, 386, quoting from the Cooperative Magazine of November, 1827.
• 49.  Quarterly Letter, I, 6.
• 50.  Quarterly Letter, I, above. The amount charged to pay this item was a variable in Warren’s plan. By the fifth month of the first year the amount added to original cost had been reduced to four per cent. Twenty years later he recommended adding six per cent to the original cost. Practical Details, 22; Equitable Commerce, 61.
• 51.  Practical Details, 15.
• 52.  Practical Details, 29.
• 53.  The Peaceful Revolutionist, I (February 5, 1833), 6. Warren skirted barter economy but briefly, even though he saw nothing particularly invidious about its operation if the need of either party involved did not constitute a margin sufficiently noticeable to promote exploitation one by the other.
• 54.  Quarterly Letter, I, 6.
• 55.  Warren, True Civilization an Immediate Necessity and the Last Ground of Hope for Mankind. Being the Results and Conclusions of Thirty-nine Years’ Laborious Study and Experiments in Civilization as it is, and in Different Enterprises for Reconstruction, 88, hereafter cited as True Civilization an Immediate Necessity; Practical Details, 15.
• 56.  Warren MSS., Labadie Collection, “A Scrap of History,” undated and un-paginated. This brief manuscript appears to be part of another attempted publication, but a comparison with his published works indicates that it remained unused.
• 57.  The first customer in the time store was Warren’s brother, according to Warren’s account. He recalled prevailing upon him to make the first purchase to start the experiment, “desperate with disappointment and chagrin” at the failure of three friends to make promised transactions. Warren, Practical Details, 17-18. Two weeks after the Time Store opened, the Western Tiller of Cincinnati began publication of a series of eight dispatches, which ran from June 1 through July 27, written by “A Late Member of New Harmony,” and addressed “To the Friends of the Social System,” which, based on the criteria of internal criticism, must be attributed to Warren. These essays are not only prepared in his peculiar style, but amount to a trial run of some of the ideas to be found later in Equitable Commerce.
• 58.  Practical Details, 24; Peaceful Revolutionist, I (April 5, 1833), 15,
• 59.  Practical Details, 22, 25, 31.
• 60.  This was Richard Folger, who with John Pickering, were among the earliest supporters of equity. Pickering later broke with Warren at the time of the commencement of “Utopia,” some twenty years later. Practical Details, 33; Periodical Letter, I, 2nd. series, supplement 2, p. 2; Peaceful Revolutionist, II (May, 1848), 13-15.
• 61.  Peaceful Revolutionist, I (February 5, 1833), 6.
• 62.  See Warren’s letter to the Mechanic’s Free Press (Philadelphia, 1827-1831), May 10, 1828, p. 2, quoted in Commons, Documentary History, V, 133-137.
• 63.  Practical Details, 16; Peaceful Revolutionist, I (February 5, 1833), 7.
• 64.  Practical Details, 27, 29.
• 65.  Compare prices reported by Warren in 1827 in Practical Details, 21, 23, 27.
• 66.  The following is a representative example: “Bought three barrels of rice at Haydn & Co’s. auction at 1½ cents a pound, and am selling it out at 1¾, while the customary price for so good an article has uniformly been 8 cents a pound; people are coming from all directions to get it . . .” Practical Details, 26.
• 67.  This has been a controversial point among interested observers, although Warren leaves no doubt about the matter. For confirmation of the three year duration see Peaceful Revolutionist, I (February 5, 1833), 7; The Herald of Equity, I (February, 1841), 6.
• 68.  Practical Details, 40.
• 69.  Practical Details, 23. Saunders later wrote for the Free Enquirer under the pseudonym “Philanthropos.” Free Enquirer, I, new series, (December 31, 1829), 79; Periodical Letter, I, 2nd. series, (January, 1858), 98-101.
• 70.  Ely stated that Warren did a total business of $150,000 during the operation of the time store, but Warren’s contemporary accounts were much more modest than this. In March, 1829 he revealed that he had never utilized more than $4,000 in the proceedings up to that time, and that he had retailed a total of about $30,000 worth of goods. Warren had actually begun the process of liquidation of the store at this time, but shortly revived it again. It is unlikely that his volume quintupled in the next year of operations. Ely, Labor Movement, 239; Practical Details, 31-32.
• 71.  Practical Details, 41.
• 72.  Practical Details, 42.
• 73.  True Civilization an Immediate Necessity, 107-108.
• 74.  Practical Details, 43.
• 75.  The fullest work on the most famous of Owen’s sons is Richard W. Leopold, Robert Dale Owen, A Biography (Cambridge, Mass., 1940). This stresses his later life as an Indiana political figure and convert to spiritualism and largely dismisses his activities as a reformer and freethinker. For another treatment with differing interpretations see Elinor Pancoast and Anne E. Lincoln, The Incorrigible Idealist, Robert Dale Owen in America (Bloomington, Ind., 1940).
• 76.  The most recent work of extensive character is the sympathetic study by Alice J. G. Perkins and Theresa Wolf son, Frances Wright, Free Enquirer (New York, 1939). Of considerable use also is William R. Waterman, Frances Wright (Columbia University Studies in History, Economics and Public Law, vol. CXV, no. 1) (New York, 1924).
• 77.  A valuable account of this journal may be found in Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines 1741-1850 (Cambridge, Mass., 1939), 536-538.
• 78.  This was also true of Philadelphia, where The Mechanic’s Free Press had already made Warren’s views known to the workingmen of the city. Three stores involving Warren’s plan had begun operating in this city before the Cincinnati store completed its second year. Mechanic’s Free Press, May 17, September 20, 1828; March 14, 1829.
• 79.  Practical Details, 43.
• 80.  Bailie, Josiah Warren, 25.
• 81.  Waterman notes the influence of Warren in Frances Wright’s proposed reconstruction of society. Frances Wright, 251. When the two first became acquainted is uncertain; no evidence exists to support the contention that their association dates from New Harmony days, as Warren undoubtedly left the colony before Fanny’s residence was established. However, they had begun exchanging ideas in Cincinnati before she left for New York. Shortly before Warren undertook his own trip to the East, she recalled being at his home in Cincinnati in 1828, the occasion for this comment being the appearance of a lamp in the New York scene which she claimed was a theft of the earlier one patented by Warren in 1821. The Free Enquirer, II (May 22, 1830), 240. See also her favorable sketch of Warren and his accomplishments in The Free Enquirer, II (October 23, 1830), 412. It is interesting to observe that this comment, somewhat uncritical and ignorant of several facts concerning the Warren venture, was written after he had left New York and returned to the West. There is no indication that Robert Dale Owen had lost any confidence in the eventual success of a coöperative village from the spirit of this communication.
• 82.  Warren’s short notice was headed “To the Friends of the Equal Exchange of Labor in the West” and was dated July 4, 1830. The Free Enquirer, II (July 17, 1830), 301-302.
• 83.  The old clay cast method was employed in constructing the stereotype plate, and the substitution of a mixture of shellac, tar and sand for type metal was an unusual departure. Still another mixture, consisting of clay, sand, beeswax, tallow, oil, gum arabic and stearine for the purpose of making fine-surface engravings was also perfected at this time. For a comparison with the earlier stereotyping devices, see Thomas Hodgson, An Essay on the Origin and Progress of Stereotype Printing (Newcastle, England, 1820), 13-14; Theodore L. De Vinne, Printing in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1924), 6; New Harmony Gazette, I, 255, the latter for a description of the Lanefelder process developed in Austria in 1826, which aroused the attention of the Owenites while Warren was a member of the community.
• 84.  A full description of the compositions involved can be found in Kubler, History of Stereotyping, 301.
• 85.  Warren’s first work, A New System of Musical Notation, published in New Harmony, was closely followed by the other that same year, A Collection of the Most Popular Church Music Written Upon Geometric or Scientific Principles, a group of excerpts from 56 popular church hymns of the 1840’s printed in a form adapted for use by brass bands. Speaking of his father’s innovation, George Warren, himself a widely known band leader in southern Indiana in later years, explained, “He dispensed with the sharp and flat signatures, and the tier and length of the stem gave the length of the note, and the piano or forte power was designated by the size of the note itself.” “Josiah Warren,” 4-5.
• 86.  Patent No. 4479 on “Composition for Stereotype Plates” was issued to Warren on April 25, 1846. C. S. Partridge, Stereotyping the Papier Mache Process (Chicago, 1892), 130. A certified copy of this patent, signed and sealed by Thomas Eubank, Commissioner of Patents, August 26, 1850, is in the Warren MSS. in the Workingmen’s Institute Library.
• 87.  Herbert A. Kellar, Solon Robinson Pioneer and Agriculturist (Indiana Historical Collections, vol. XXI) (2 vols. Indianapolis, 1936), II, 504-507. For references to Warren’s process in other papers see Prairie Farmer, V (June, 1845), 155-156; Daily Cincinnati Gazette, July 23, July 30, 1845; Indiana Statesman, July 26, September 13, September 20, October 4, 1845, the latter issues also carrying reprints from articles on this subject in the New York Sun, New York Morning News, Vincennes (Ind.) Gazette and Princeton (Ind.) Chronicle. Other notices appeared from time to time in other stopping-off places along Robinson’s route, including Evansville, and Shawneetown, Illinois.
• 88.  Indiana Statesman, July 4, August 16, October 11, December 27, 1845; January 31, February 14, 1846. The cut in the last issue cited was a superb five column spread, eight inches high, of the map of the disputed Oregon Territory.
• 89.  One of Waren’s interesting controversies was that carried on with the editor of the Indiana Statesman, during the time following the closing of the New Harmony time store. Although he respected Warren as a technical innovator in the printing and engraving field, Burns refused to print his articles on the labor exchange, calling them “long-winded stories,” and marvelling that in the obscurity Warren was able to develop any kind of a clearly expressed idea. Indiana Statesman, February 15, 1845.
• 90.  The title page carried the date 1846 as the date of publication. All citations below are from this rare original edition unless otherwise noted. A selection from this edition is included in Irving Mark and Eugene L. Schwab, (eds.), The Faith of Our Fathers; An Anthology of Americana, 1790-1860 (New York, 1952), 380-384.
• 91.  A second edition appeared in 1849 while Warren was at “Utopia” (Smith’s Landing), Ohio, while a third was published in New York in 1852. A slightly altered version, with the addition of an editor’s preface and a different appendix, under the title True Civilization: A Subject of Vital and Serious Interest to All People but Most Immediately to Men and Women of Labor and Sorrow, printed under Warren’s direction in diffondale, Mass., in 1869, became the fourth appearance of this work. The fifth edition, posthumously released by Benjamin Tucker at Princeton, Mass., in 1875 bore the same title and content as the 1869 edition. Other Warren works incorporated the first two words of the title of this latter version, which has been the cause of a considerable amount of confusion among bibliographers.
• 92.  Equitable Commerce, introduction, iii.
• 93.  The five basic principles of the Warrenite community were re-phrased a number of times, receiving their most concise statement in 1863:
• 94.  Equitable Commerce, 10.
• 95.  “The security of person and property requires that each and every individual should be the supreme law to himself and his own. That one should have no power over another’s person or property.” Equitable Commerce, 24.
• 96.  Warren believed that the fact that human beings were characterized by individual peculiarities and that it still was acknowledged and remained “un-smothered” made this the starting place for what he termed the “ascent towards order and harmony.” Equitable Commerce, 4.
• 97.  Equitable Commerce, 4-5.
• 98.  Equitable Commerce, 7.
• 99.  Warren averred that the term “sovereignty of the people” could mean nothing else except the sovereignty of each individual; “Where is the sovereignty of a people when the sovereignty of every individual is surrendered to votes of majorities, or to a few men appointed to interpret and administer laws and institutions?” Practical Details, 40.
• 100.  Equitable Commerce, 23.
• 101.  Warren was unconvinced that statute law had produced any decline in the number of violent crimes. He inveighed against capital punishment for murder as just another variety of murder, an act which did not perform the function of a deterrent to fresh crimes of the same type. Equitable Commerce, 22.
• 102.  Warren accused governments of having been responsible for more bloodshed and violence throughout history than could have possibly occurred in the absence of all governments. The indictment of government as an agent of destruction and mass murder has become a much-repeated anarchist arraignment in almost every land which has developed an anarchist press. Equitable Commerce, 19.
• 103.  Equitable Commerce, 22, 24.
• 104.  “. . . neither rulers nor ruled can tell how the laws will be interpreted or administered till they have been repeatedly infringed and punishment has been inflicted,” Warren observed, seeking to discover the precise moment when law began to disintegrate. Equitable Commerce, 20.
• 105.  Wars he described as “probably the greatest of all destroyers of property,” and professed to be able to find only two roots from which all wars had originated; “direct or indirect plunder” and “the privilege of governing.” Warren denied the right of any government to force its citizens to fight against their will. Equitable Commerce, 21, 44.
• 106.  Equitable Commerce, 27-28. The right to complete individual freedom, according to Warrenite principle, was qualified only by the responsibility of each to respect the individuality of each. Infringement of another’s sovereignty carried with it all consequences of such action. Warren believed that a harmonious society was impossible unless each member became individually responsible for his acts. The similarity of Warren and Herbert Spencer’s later “law of equal freedom” can be detected at this point, despite the divergent points of origin.
• 107.  Warren made no distinction between “government” and “state” as the classic anarchist writers of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries have generally done; a connotation of voluntarism has been imparted to the former and coercion to the latter of these terms.
• 108 An example of the problem involved in the matter of accurately using such specialized words can be found in the interesting study by Arthur E. Bestor, Jr., “The Evolution of the Socialist Vocabulary,” in Journal of the History of Ideas, IX (June, 1948), 259-302.
• 109 Ernest A. Vizetelly, The Anarchists (London, 1911), and Peter Latouche, Anarchy! An Authentic Exposition of the Methods of Anarchists and the Aims of Anarchism (London, 1908), are prime examples of popular writing concerned with anarchism primarily as a program of calculated terrorism aimed in particular to those in high places. Latouche, in his zeal to lay all prominent international political assassinations at the door of the anarchists, even included those of Presidents Lincoln and Garfield. Anarchy!, 238. For vindication of the employment of violence by anarchists, see Peter A. Kropotkin, article “Anarchism,” Encyclopedia Britannica, XI ed., (29 vols. London, 1910), I, 916.
• 110 There is virtually no credible evidence for the assumption that violence is a basic element of the strategy of the anarchists. In distinguishing between the doctrine and the coercive action sometimes associated with it, the non-anarchist German observer and critic Ernst Victor Zenker remarked, “That the theory of Anarchism is not merely a systematic incitement to robbery and murder, we need hardly to repeat. . . . Proudhon and Stirner . . . never once preached force. . . . The doctrine of propaganda which since Proudhon’s time has always accompanied a certain form of anarchist theory, is a foreign element, having no necessary or internal connection with the fundamental ideas of anarchism. It is simply a piece of tactics borrowed from the circumstances peculiar to Russia, and accepted moreover only by one fraction of the Anarchists, and approved by very few indeed in its most crude form; it is merely the old tactics of all revolutionary parties in every age.” Anarchism, a Criticism and History of Anarchist Theory (English translation, New York, 1897), 306.
• 111 Zenker, Anarchism, 6. An early and exhaustive inquiry into the matter is Césare Lombroso, Gli Anarchici (Turin, 1894). A German edition was published in Hamburg the next year under the title Die Anarchisten. Eine Kriminal Psychologische und Sociologische Studie. Lombroso’s methods and techniques as well as most of his conclusions have been discarded for some time.
• 112 Henry David, The History of the Haymarket Affair, continues to be the most thorough account of this unfortunate occurrence. In American history the identification of anarchism with terroristic activities dates from this time, an impression which neither time nor attempts at rectification of the injustice inflicted at the time have succeeded in erasing.
• 113 An accompanying attitude has been the double standard which has tacitly been adhered to with respect to the employment of extra-legal violence. No public condemnation accompanied the use of coercion on the part of industrialists and local groups of citizènry, acting in a vigilante capacity, in disputes with strikers and radicals, until very recently. For an account of this matter see Robert Hunter, Violence and the Labor Movement (New York, 1914), 276-326.
• 114 See especially David W. Petegorsky, Left Wing Democracy in the English Civil War; A Study of the Social Philosophy of Gerrard Winstanley (London, 1947), Chapters I-V, and Mildred A. Gibb, John Lilburne, The Leveller (London, 1947), introduction. See also Mosca, Ruling Classes, 271-272, for the advancement of a cyclical theory dealing with the persistence of anarchist and allied sentiments in the ancient literature of China, India, Persia, Israel, Greece and Rome, and continuing down through the Christian Fathers and the Muslims. The influence of Merriam’s view on subsequent writers dealing with anarchism in the United States is readily observable, however.
• 115 The 1880’s saw the presence in the United States of anarchists in numbers almost equal to those of socialists. Morris Hillquit, Loose Leaves from a Busy Life (New York, 1934), 4.
• 116 For a presentation of this matter as it came to a head at the time of the badly-ignored Anarchist convention in Pittsburgh in 1883, see Chester McA. Destler, “Shall Red and Black Unite? An American Revolutionary Document of 1883,” in Pacific Historical Review, XIV (December, 1945), 434-451.
• 117  For brief expert summaries of both “schools” from the individualist point of view see Victor Yarros, article “Individualist or Philosophical Anarchism,” 41-45, and Clarence Lee Swartz, article “Anarchist Communism,” 45-50, in William D. P. Bliss and Rudolph M. Binder, (eds.), The New Encyclopedia of Social Reform (New York, 1908). For an admirable and sympathetic treatment of the European anarchist philosophy and its exponents by a conservative, consult Alvan F. Sanborn, Paris and the Social Revolution (Boston, 1905), Chapters I-VII.
• 118  For other aspects of this conflict consult Ernest Armand, Formas de Vida en común sin Estado no Autoridad (Carlos Espinosa, trans.) (Madrid, 1934); Rudolf Rocker, Nationalism and Culture (Los Angeles, 1937); same author, La Juventud de un Rebeide (Buenos Aires, 1947); Helmut Rüdiger, Federalismen (Stockholm, 1947).
• 119  “In a world where inequality of ability is inevitable, anarchists do not sanction any attempt to produce equality by artificial or authoritarian means. The only equality they posit and will strive their utmost to defend is the equality of opportunity. This necessitates the maximum amount of freedom for each individual. This will not necessarily result in equality of incomes or of wealth but will result in returns proportionate to service rendered. To base society on the supposition that the laborer of great capacity will content himself, in favor of the weak, with half his wages, furnish his services gratuitously, and produce for that abstraction called “society,” in the words of Proudhon, ‘is to base society on a sentiment, . . . which, erected systematically into a principle, is only a false virtue, a dangerous hypocrisy.’ A hypocrisy, unfortunately, eagerly subscribed to by a weak, downtrodden, and misguided portion of the populace.” Quoted from Laurance Labadie, Anarchism Applied to Economics (a leaflet). Emphasized portions are his.
• 120  For example, the presence at the Warrenite colony of “Modern Times” of such a wide variety of the most extreme types of unconventional behavior has resulted in the estimation of this experiment in anarchist voluntarism as a gathering of spiritualists, Fourierites, free lovers, Comtean Positivists, and even Swedenborgians. Scarcity of contemporary accounts is in a large way responsible for the confusion of interpretations.
• 121The details concerning Warren’s birthplace and parentage are still obscure. Beyond the knowledge of his birth in 1798, practically nothing of an authoritative nature exists. One thing is quite definite, nevertheless; sharing an illustrious colonial name did not mean a similar sharing of the general good fortune of the Warren clan. The year 1819 found him making the familiar trek westward and southward down the Ohio which a vast number of Americans continued to make until the midway point in the century was reached, with the principal aim in view of bettering their economic conditions. Warren and an elder brother, George, had shown considerable promise as musicians while still very young, and had become members of the “Old Boston Brigade Band” while still boys of school age. When he and his recently-acquired wife settled in Cincinnati, Josiah continued to earn his livelihood as a musician and teacher of music, an activity he never completely deserted.
• 122The change of locale seems to have sharpened a native inventive genius. Here he began a restless career of invention and innovation in the fields of illumination, printing-press manufacture, stereotyping and musical notation worthy of closer examination in connection with contributions of the Ohio valley to the growing industrial consciousness of the nation. His first contribution was a lamp of revolutionary construction, devised to burn lard instead of the much costlier tallow. It had unusual success, and led to the construction and operation of a factory devoted to its production which prospered, lard oil not yet being known.
• 123It is highly probable that with this background and bent, Josiah Warren might have become one of the early men of wealth in the growing Midwest, had not the personality of Robert Owen intruded and so impressed him with the exciting and disturbing spirit of social reform. Owen’s attempt to remake the pattern of mankind’s affairs is doubtless an occurrence without comparison in the social history of the new West. One of the few early industrial millionaires, the Welsh textile magnate and philanthropist conceived of a new world on a scale which was lavish far beyond the imagination of his time.
• 124Owen was an environmental determinist. Beginning with the assumption that human nature was a constant, he related all behavior patterns to subsequent reactions to environmental forces. The core of his doctrine was that man’s character was a product of exterior stress which he as an individual had no appreciable part in forming. Thus the social system was responsible for its wayward folk, and desirable modes of conduct could be brought about by proper education and supervision. Owen decried the idea of personal responsibility, believing the tenet absurd and productive only of harm; praise and blame on a personal level formed no part of his working social vocabulary.
• 125Having already partially developed his environmental thesis in his model factory town of New Lanark, Scotland, which enjoyed unsurpassed living and working conditions, Owen was determined to put it into operation on an even more striking level, with a new continent as a backdrop. He purchased the colony of Harmony, Indiana from its founders and occupants, a divergent German Lutheran sect known as Rappites. A communal venture with a deeply religious flavor, this group had developed an extensive and strikingly productive estate out of raw wilderness on the Indiana bank of the Wabash River some fifty miles upstream from its juncture with the Ohio. Desiring once more to return to their earlier home in western Pennsylvania, they sold the tract of 30,000 acres of land and the sturdy buildings thereon to Owen for the sum of $150,000. He then renamed it New Harmony and brought in settlers sympathetic to his philosophy and anxious to experience practical success. It was the largest and most promising experiment in environmentalism in the nineteenth century.
• 126Having already partially developed his environmental thesis in his model factory town of New Lanark, Scotland, which enjoyed unsurpassed living and working conditions, Owen was determined to put it into operation on an even more striking level, with a new continent as a backdrop. He purchased the colony of Harmony, Indiana from its founders and occupants, a divergent German Lutheran sect known as Rappites. A communal venture with a deeply religious flavor, this group had developed an extensive and strikingly productive estate out of raw wilderness on the Indiana bank of the Wabash River some fifty miles upstream from its juncture with the Ohio. Desiring once more to return to their earlier home in western Pennsylvania, they sold the tract of 30,000 acres of land and the sturdy buildings thereon to Owen for the sum of $150,000. He then renamed it New Harmony and brought in settlers sympathetic to his philosophy and anxious to experience practical success. It was the largest and most promising experiment in environmentalism in the nineteenth century.
• 127Having already partially developed his environmental thesis in his model factory town of New Lanark, Scotland, which enjoyed unsurpassed living and working conditions, Owen was determined to put it into operation on an even more striking level, with a new continent as a backdrop. He purchased the colony of Harmony, Indiana from its founders and occupants, a divergent German Lutheran sect known as Rappites. A communal venture with a deeply religious flavor, this group had developed an extensive and strikingly productive estate out of raw wilderness on the Indiana bank of the Wabash River some fifty miles upstream from its juncture with the Ohio. Desiring once more to return to their earlier home in western Pennsylvania, they sold the tract of 30,000 acres of land and the sturdy buildings thereon to Owen for the sum of $150,000. He then renamed it New Harmony and brought in settlers sympathetic to his philosophy and anxious to experience practical success. It was the largest and most promising experiment in environmentalism in the nineteenth century.
• 128Warren was to know the exhilaration and dejection of the founding and decline of the Owenite interlude at New Harmony before striking out on his own as a social radical. Although unable to hear Owen speak until 1825, he was a member of the first group gathering for the purpose of forming a community of property at the appointed place. By the fall of this same year he was taking active party in the Preliminary Society, and was a participant in the drafting and approving of the first constitution of the New Harmony Community of Equality in February, 1826. His musical training was soon employed; as leader of the community’s band, he was long remembered by the first settlers. By the late winter Warren, his wife and baby daughter were an established family unit of the settlement, and were to remain there for over a year.
• 129Warren was to know the exhilaration and dejection of the founding and decline of the Owenite interlude at New Harmony before striking out on his own as a social radical. Although unable to hear Owen speak until 1825, he was a member of the first group gathering for the purpose of forming a community of property at the appointed place. By the fall of this same year he was taking active party in the Preliminary Society, and was a participant in the drafting and approving of the first constitution of the New Harmony Community of Equality in February, 1826. His musical training was soon employed; as leader of the community’s band, he was long remembered by the first settlers. By the late winter Warren, his wife and baby daughter were an established family unit of the settlement, and were to remain there for over a year.
• 130Warren was to know the exhilaration and dejection of the founding and decline of the Owenite interlude at New Harmony before striking out on his own as a social radical. Although unable to hear Owen speak until 1825, he was a member of the first group gathering for the purpose of forming a community of property at the appointed place. By the fall of this same year he was taking active party in the Preliminary Society, and was a participant in the drafting and approving of the first constitution of the New Harmony Community of Equality in February, 1826. His musical training was soon employed; as leader of the community’s band, he was long remembered by the first settlers. By the late winter Warren, his wife and baby daughter were an established family unit of the settlement, and were to remain there for over a year.
• 131Warren was to know the exhilaration and dejection of the founding and decline of the Owenite interlude at New Harmony before striking out on his own as a social radical. Although unable to hear Owen speak until 1825, he was a member of the first group gathering for the purpose of forming a community of property at the appointed place. By the fall of this same year he was taking active party in the Preliminary Society, and was a participant in the drafting and approving of the first constitution of the New Harmony Community of Equality in February, 1826. His musical training was soon employed; as leader of the community’s band, he was long remembered by the first settlers. By the late winter Warren, his wife and baby daughter were an established family unit of the settlement, and were to remain there for over a year.
• 132Warren made a quick and incisive deduction as to the cause of the debacle which placed him at once in a camp far removed from that in which the faithful Owenites would henceforth gather. He felt that the common property scheme of the New Harmony colony had been instituted by Owen as a means and not as an end; that what had been desired was a social situation in which the interests of the different individuals would coöperate instead of clash one with the other. Even though thirty years of retrospection upon the experience continued to bring back pleasant memories of what had transpired there, the management of financial and property affairs convinced him of the failure of their mission; “but for property considerations the experiments never would have commenced,” was his pithy summation of the situation. Why did an amicable settlement of material affairs fail to become a reality? Warren blamed it upon the submergence of the individual within the confines of the community. The consequences of such a procedure, said Warren, were inevitable. Not only was individual initiative stifled by failure to provide a place within the structure for personal rights and interests beyond the sphere of religious matters, but the elimination of individual property rights resulted in almost total dissipation of responsibility for the occurrence of individual incapacity, failure, and short-comings of other kinds. This was not all. He had noted that the expressions of natural differences of opinion were increasingly looked upon as unfortunate developments and obstacles to success, which had damaging effect on the continuance of courtesy and tolerance. Thus, despite frequent reorganizations, failures became more abrupt and chaos drew nearer. Warren summed up the whole matter in one vigorous outburst:
• 133Warren made a quick and incisive deduction as to the cause of the debacle which placed him at once in a camp far removed from that in which the faithful Owenites would henceforth gather. He felt that the common property scheme of the New Harmony colony had been instituted by Owen as a means and not as an end; that what had been desired was a social situation in which the interests of the different individuals would coöperate instead of clash one with the other. Even though thirty years of retrospection upon the experience continued to bring back pleasant memories of what had transpired there, the management of financial and property affairs convinced him of the failure of their mission; “but for property considerations the experiments never would have commenced,” was his pithy summation of the situation. Why did an amicable settlement of material affairs fail to become a reality? Warren blamed it upon the submergence of the individual within the confines of the community. The consequences of such a procedure, said Warren, were inevitable. Not only was individual initiative stifled by failure to provide a place within the structure for personal rights and interests beyond the sphere of religious matters, but the elimination of individual property rights resulted in almost total dissipation of responsibility for the occurrence of individual incapacity, failure, and short-comings of other kinds. This was not all. He had noted that the expressions of natural differences of opinion were increasingly looked upon as unfortunate developments and obstacles to success, which had damaging effect on the continuance of courtesy and tolerance. Thus, despite frequent reorganizations, failures became more abrupt and chaos drew nearer. Warren summed up the whole matter in one vigorous outburst:
• 134Warren made a quick and incisive deduction as to the cause of the debacle which placed him at once in a camp far removed from that in which the faithful Owenites would henceforth gather. He felt that the common property scheme of the New Harmony colony had been instituted by Owen as a means and not as an end; that what had been desired was a social situation in which the interests of the different individuals would coöperate instead of clash one with the other. Even though thirty years of retrospection upon the experience continued to bring back pleasant memories of what had transpired there, the management of financial and property affairs convinced him of the failure of their mission; “but for property considerations the experiments never would have commenced,” was his pithy summation of the situation. Why did an amicable settlement of material affairs fail to become a reality? Warren blamed it upon the submergence of the individual within the confines of the community. The consequences of such a procedure, said Warren, were inevitable. Not only was individual initiative stifled by failure to provide a place within the structure for personal rights and interests beyond the sphere of religious matters, but the elimination of individual property rights resulted in almost total dissipation of responsibility for the occurrence of individual incapacity, failure, and short-comings of other kinds. This was not all. He had noted that the expressions of natural differences of opinion were increasingly looked upon as unfortunate developments and obstacles to success, which had damaging effect on the continuance of courtesy and tolerance. Thus, despite frequent reorganizations, failures became more abrupt and chaos drew nearer. Warren summed up the whole matter in one vigorous outburst:
• 135Warren made a quick and incisive deduction as to the cause of the debacle which placed him at once in a camp far removed from that in which the faithful Owenites would henceforth gather. He felt that the common property scheme of the New Harmony colony had been instituted by Owen as a means and not as an end; that what had been desired was a social situation in which the interests of the different individuals would coöperate instead of clash one with the other. Even though thirty years of retrospection upon the experience continued to bring back pleasant memories of what had transpired there, the management of financial and property affairs convinced him of the failure of their mission; “but for property considerations the experiments never would have commenced,” was his pithy summation of the situation. Why did an amicable settlement of material affairs fail to become a reality? Warren blamed it upon the submergence of the individual within the confines of the community. The consequences of such a procedure, said Warren, were inevitable. Not only was individual initiative stifled by failure to provide a place within the structure for personal rights and interests beyond the sphere of religious matters, but the elimination of individual property rights resulted in almost total dissipation of responsibility for the occurrence of individual incapacity, failure, and short-comings of other kinds. This was not all. He had noted that the expressions of natural differences of opinion were increasingly looked upon as unfortunate developments and obstacles to success, which had damaging effect on the continuance of courtesy and tolerance. Thus, despite frequent reorganizations, failures became more abrupt and chaos drew nearer. Warren summed up the whole matter in one vigorous outburst:
• 136From the fall of 1850 into the spring of 1851, Warren described the technical progress of his process in his correspondence to Andrews, and his cordial relations with Jewett; the two apparently shared considerable mutual respect and affection. “Mr. Jewett is delighted with the very first results here,” he wrote Andrews early in October, and subsequent cheerful dispatches from Boston or Washington culminated with the triumphant announcement in mid-March, 1851 that Jewett was “perfectly delighted” with their application of the process to his cataloguing project, followed by the heartwarming news on April 1 that a committee set up by the Smithsonian had investigated his printing process “most severely,” had reported “unqualifiedly in its favor,” and “had advised purchase for the Institution.” It was indeed a day of high joy for Warren.28a
• 137Although Warren broke sharply with Owen’s collective plans for producing the good life, in other respects the cleavage was not so clearly marked. Indeed, his championing of individual sovereignty was to posit a dilemma which was never satisfactorily reconciled. His writings continued to put forth the doctrine of environmentalism, but liberally interleaved with a persistent promotion of belief in free will and individual responsibility which Owen would have categorically dismissed as prime heresy. Conventional society lost Warren forever, despite all this. For almost half a century he followed a course of ceaseless activity, attempting several experiments embracing his own conception of societary reorganization. He never repudiated Owen in an overt way, his attitude toward the founder of New Harmony remaining one of deep respect to his last days. Many years after the break took place Warren declared:
• 138Although Warren broke sharply with Owen’s collective plans for producing the good life, in other respects the cleavage was not so clearly marked. Indeed, his championing of individual sovereignty was to posit a dilemma which was never satisfactorily reconciled. His writings continued to put forth the doctrine of environmentalism, but liberally interleaved with a persistent promotion of belief in free will and individual responsibility which Owen would have categorically dismissed as prime heresy. Conventional society lost Warren forever, despite all this. For almost half a century he followed a course of ceaseless activity, attempting several experiments embracing his own conception of societary reorganization. He never repudiated Owen in an overt way, his attitude toward the founder of New Harmony remaining one of deep respect to his last days. Many years after the break took place Warren declared:
• 139One element of Owen’s thought found ready acceptance, in contrast to the lukewarm attitude toward social experimentation. In the hands of Warren and a large number of Warren’s followers throughout the remander of the century, the basic economic doctrine of coöperation met no opposition whatever, despite the serious trouble encountered in putting it into action. This was the proposal to exchange all labor employed in the production of goods and services equally, hour for hour, substituting for the state or privately controlled currency based on metallic commodities a circulating medium consisting of “labor notes.” These were simply bills issued in the form of currency, limited in issue and signed by the issuer, promising to furnish labor at specified occupations or activities for specific periods, in exchange for services desired of and rendered by another. These were to be issued on the basis of hours of labor or fractions of hours, depending upon the amount of another’s labor consumed.
• 140Owen had been mulling over the labor theory of value before coming to America. His four Essays on the Formation of Human Character, published in New Lanark in 1812-1813, contained indications of his whole-hearted conversion to this doctrine. The contention that the true price of a thing is the amount of labor expended in its production had been espoused by political economists generations before Adam Smith, although Smith had stated it in classic form in 1776. Owen’s labor note idea was a ground-breaker in the direction of practical realization of this idea, and this he also had fully developed in his own mind before reaching New Harmony.
• 141Owen had been mulling over the labor theory of value before coming to America. His four Essays on the Formation of Human Character, published in New Lanark in 1812-1813, contained indications of his whole-hearted conversion to this doctrine. The contention that the true price of a thing is the amount of labor expended in its production had been espoused by political economists generations before Adam Smith, although Smith had stated it in classic form in 1776. Owen’s labor note idea was a ground-breaker in the direction of practical realization of this idea, and this he also had fully developed in his own mind before reaching New Harmony.
• 142Owen had been mulling over the labor theory of value before coming to America. His four Essays on the Formation of Human Character, published in New Lanark in 1812-1813, contained indications of his whole-hearted conversion to this doctrine. The contention that the true price of a thing is the amount of labor expended in its production had been espoused by political economists generations before Adam Smith, although Smith had stated it in classic form in 1776. Owen’s labor note idea was a ground-breaker in the direction of practical realization of this idea, and this he also had fully developed in his own mind before reaching New Harmony.
• 143Warren became a permanent convert to this new system, propagandizing for its adoption both verbally and through practical attempts for almost forty-five years. Its operation was never realized at New Harmony, so Josiah Warren became the first person to employ the device in everyday economic intercourse. His Cincinnati Time Store of 1827-1830 became the first scientific experiment in coöperative economy in modern history, despite its limited objectives as such, as well as its obscurity resulting from the modest unsophisticated structure employed and the stark utilitarianism which prevailed during its existence.
• 144While Warren was forming his own philosophy, rejecting part of Owen’s convictions and accepting another part, his New Harmony experiences as a member of the original Community of Equality were producing other repercussions. His observation of human differences, among other things, shattered his faith in the ideal of economic equality. Basing his conclusions on the assumption that different persons put differing amounts of energy and time toward the accomplishment of various ends, and satisfied with the motivational drives which “enlightened self-interest” might supply, he proposed the substitution of the ideal of equal opportunities to the access to land, raw materials and credit. Equal opportunities being provided, individual differences and completely free competition would gradually work toward the establishment of an equitable society, in which returns would be measured by the amount of work performed, both quantitatively and qualitatively. To Warren the striving for equity was the highest possible goal of human effort.
• 145While Warren was forming his own philosophy, rejecting part of Owen’s convictions and accepting another part, his New Harmony experiences as a member of the original Community of Equality were producing other repercussions. His observation of human differences, among other things, shattered his faith in the ideal of economic equality. Basing his conclusions on the assumption that different persons put differing amounts of energy and time toward the accomplishment of various ends, and satisfied with the motivational drives which “enlightened self-interest” might supply, he proposed the substitution of the ideal of equal opportunities to the access to land, raw materials and credit. Equal opportunities being provided, individual differences and completely free competition would gradually work toward the establishment of an equitable society, in which returns would be measured by the amount of work performed, both quantitatively and qualitatively. To Warren the striving for equity was the highest possible goal of human effort.
• 146Warren’s complete program was a cumulative affair which did not receive definitive statement for almost twenty years. A part of this period of growth was his growing disregard for constituted authority, partially a product of attachment to a number of attitudes which convinced him that institutional government was a superfluous part of human society. His primary source of dissatisfaction with what he called the “communistic experiments” in New Harmony was the combination of interests. This combination required, as he saw it, a government based on authority and demanding obedience which resulted in the death of individual liberty. The alternative which he proposed and crusaded for was a system based on voluntary coöperation, but at no place rising above any individual within its structure; “the sovereignty of the individual” had to be preserved at all costs. This matter he considered more important than any artificial arrangement of individuals which demanded the fidelity of all. There was no compensation which could equate the sacrifice of this principle of individuality. There is a frontier flavor to his own blunt declaration of individualist war upon the hobbling tendencies of institutionalism which still commands at-tention:
• 147Warren’s complete program was a cumulative affair which did not receive definitive statement for almost twenty years. A part of this period of growth was his growing disregard for constituted authority, partially a product of attachment to a number of attitudes which convinced him that institutional government was a superfluous part of human society. His primary source of dissatisfaction with what he called the “communistic experiments” in New Harmony was the combination of interests. This combination required, as he saw it, a government based on authority and demanding obedience which resulted in the death of individual liberty. The alternative which he proposed and crusaded for was a system based on voluntary coöperation, but at no place rising above any individual within its structure; “the sovereignty of the individual” had to be preserved at all costs. This matter he considered more important than any artificial arrangement of individuals which demanded the fidelity of all. There was no compensation which could equate the sacrifice of this principle of individuality. There is a frontier flavor to his own blunt declaration of individualist war upon the hobbling tendencies of institutionalism which still commands at-tention:
• 148Warren’s complete program was a cumulative affair which did not receive definitive statement for almost twenty years. A part of this period of growth was his growing disregard for constituted authority, partially a product of attachment to a number of attitudes which convinced him that institutional government was a superfluous part of human society. His primary source of dissatisfaction with what he called the “communistic experiments” in New Harmony was the combination of interests. This combination required, as he saw it, a government based on authority and demanding obedience which resulted in the death of individual liberty. The alternative which he proposed and crusaded for was a system based on voluntary coöperation, but at no place rising above any individual within its structure; “the sovereignty of the individual” had to be preserved at all costs. This matter he considered more important than any artificial arrangement of individuals which demanded the fidelity of all. There was no compensation which could equate the sacrifice of this principle of individuality. There is a frontier flavor to his own blunt declaration of individualist war upon the hobbling tendencies of institutionalism which still commands at-tention:
• 149Warren’s complete program was a cumulative affair which did not receive definitive statement for almost twenty years. A part of this period of growth was his growing disregard for constituted authority, partially a product of attachment to a number of attitudes which convinced him that institutional government was a superfluous part of human society. His primary source of dissatisfaction with what he called the “communistic experiments” in New Harmony was the combination of interests. This combination required, as he saw it, a government based on authority and demanding obedience which resulted in the death of individual liberty. The alternative which he proposed and crusaded for was a system based on voluntary coöperation, but at no place rising above any individual within its structure; “the sovereignty of the individual” had to be preserved at all costs. This matter he considered more important than any artificial arrangement of individuals which demanded the fidelity of all. There was no compensation which could equate the sacrifice of this principle of individuality. There is a frontier flavor to his own blunt declaration of individualist war upon the hobbling tendencies of institutionalism which still commands at-tention:
• 150Using this concept of individualism, then it appeared logical to him that interests, responsibilities and actions all had to be confined to this level.
• 151To solve this problem Warren brought forth the labor exchange idea which he had absorbed from Owen and which remained firmly planted in his mind. This became his initial action in the effort to promote adoption of a satisfactory method of effecting equitable exchanges, paying little attention to the complexities which had grown upon this branch of human relations through centuries of changing ethical approaches. Nevertheless, an economy based on the exchange of equivalents, or as he termed it, “labor for labor,” became the basis for the new society he projected. His formula therefore rejected the idea of paying for such goods of the earth as were not the product of human labor. Unlike later adherents to native anarchism, Warren continued to think land a fit subject for sale, an obvious inconsistency. On other matters, which he occasionally referred to as “spontaneous fruits of nature,” the raw materials derived from labor on the land, he held that such were no more fit subjects for monopoly and sale than sunshine or air.
• 152As regards compensation, Warren saw nothing fundamentally wrong with the original Owenite proposal to exchange labor time on an equal hour-for-hour basis. One of the perennial stumbling blocks to the realization of the labor cost theory, the problem of determining the relative intensities and production of the hour’s work being exchanged, did bother him somewhat. But he assumed that the principle of individual sovereignty being preserved at all times, each individual would make what he considered the necessary exceptions to the hour-for-hour yardstick without causing any noticeable disaffection among those involved in the labor exchange group.
• 153Josiah Warren was no aimless manipulator of theories. All his life he manifested a tireless interest in proof through demonstration. Scarcely had the reluctant admission of failure in Indiana appeared in the New Harmony Gazette in May 1827, when Warren gathered his family, his scant goods and savings together and returned to Cincinnati, anxious to try out his economic scheme in an actual social situation. He decided that the best means of effecting proof of the workability of his views was through the operation of a retail store, observing that such a trial was bound to affect a wide variety of persons, and its operations would thus become a type of laboratory exhibit.
• 154The venture was carefully planned. Warren had no intention of continuing in the capacity of storekeeper if what he thought proved to be successful. His intention was to close the store abruptly and begin a model village at once on the outskirts of Cincinnati. The residents he hoped to recruit from among the more enthusiastic of the group of co-operators. This was to be done as quietly as possible, publicity being kept to a bare minimum. His strategy involved the practical demonstration of every element of non-coercive equity on the autonomous local community level in such a manner as to leave no doubt as to their value and practicability. Following the explanation of the manner in which the process had been accomplished, Warren believed that a rapid growth of mutualist villages would take place. Like Robert Owen, he anticipated great things for the betterment of mankind, although the structure he contemplated was far less complex.
• 155Thus the anarchist vision of a world composed of autonomous local communities, in which individuality would be one sacred principle and economic life regulated by the mutual exchange of goods and services on a cost basis, found its expression on the trans-Allegheny frontier two decades before similar European conceptions made their appearance. Furthermore, while the present-day modified coöperative movement looks to Rochdale, England and the earlier London Labor Exchanges, the first venture in coöperative marketing had an uncontestably American setting, predating either of these more widely known English events and in some respects providing the inspiration for them.
• 156The original stock of the store consisted of three hundred dollars’ worth of groceries and dry goods which were in greatest demand. Warren posted the bills of purchase within view of all potential customers, that all might see what had originally been paid for the goods on sale. Accompanying them was a notice stating that the cost price would be charged plus a seven per cent mark-up to pay what he called “contingent expenses.” This constituted the first part of the transaction. He made it plain that no element of the cash price consisted of his profit or return as storekeeper. The customer was first to pay this cost price, plus the seven per cent, which was to defray shipping cost and general overhead of the store. But for the portion which represented his own labor, Warren merely required the customer to present him with a labor note. This note promised to repay an equal amount of time, in the customer’s occupation, to the storekeeper, as he had consumed of the storekeeper’s time in effecting the transfer of the merchandise. The principal distinction between Warren’s store and those of his neighbors was this simple feature, the separation of the merchant’s compensation from the cost of the goods sold.
• 157The original stock of the store consisted of three hundred dollars’ worth of groceries and dry goods which were in greatest demand. Warren posted the bills of purchase within view of all potential customers, that all might see what had originally been paid for the goods on sale. Accompanying them was a notice stating that the cost price would be charged plus a seven per cent mark-up to pay what he called “contingent expenses.” This constituted the first part of the transaction. He made it plain that no element of the cash price consisted of his profit or return as storekeeper. The customer was first to pay this cost price, plus the seven per cent, which was to defray shipping cost and general overhead of the store. But for the portion which represented his own labor, Warren merely required the customer to present him with a labor note. This note promised to repay an equal amount of time, in the customer’s occupation, to the storekeeper, as he had consumed of the storekeeper’s time in effecting the transfer of the merchandise. The principal distinction between Warren’s store and those of his neighbors was this simple feature, the separation of the merchant’s compensation from the cost of the goods sold.
• 158The original stock of the store consisted of three hundred dollars’ worth of groceries and dry goods which were in greatest demand. Warren posted the bills of purchase within view of all potential customers, that all might see what had originally been paid for the goods on sale. Accompanying them was a notice stating that the cost price would be charged plus a seven per cent mark-up to pay what he called “contingent expenses.” This constituted the first part of the transaction. He made it plain that no element of the cash price consisted of his profit or return as storekeeper. The customer was first to pay this cost price, plus the seven per cent, which was to defray shipping cost and general overhead of the store. But for the portion which represented his own labor, Warren merely required the customer to present him with a labor note. This note promised to repay an equal amount of time, in the customer’s occupation, to the storekeeper, as he had consumed of the storekeeper’s time in effecting the transfer of the merchandise. The principal distinction between Warren’s store and those of his neighbors was this simple feature, the separation of the merchant’s compensation from the cost of the goods sold.
• 159Often asked by people who failed to understand what he was trying to do, why he did not charge a blanket percentage to cover the entire matter of costs and profit, Warren patiently explained that failure to disconnect the two operations would destroy the principle he was trying to illustrate. No percentage could be accurately assigned to serve either the seller’s or the buyer’s interest; no particular relation existed between the profit and the labor expended in production of the article vended. Thus for instance twenty percent profit on needles would soon result in the storekeeper’s ruination, while the same percentage on broadcloth would net him a return of probably two dollars for a scant ten minutes work, obviously inequitable. A storekeeper, he went on, might buy and sell one barrel or a hundred barrels of flour in the same time; thus the correct basis upon which he should be paid was solely the amount of time expended in conducting the transaction.
• 160Warren was convinced that nothing was superior to the direct exchange of commodities and services; if agreement as to labor content existed, it was preferable to any system involving elements of confidence and risk, which he was convinced the use of currency necessarily provoked. Realizing that specialization and diversity of tastes made this only a partial solution to the continual problem of exchange, the adoption of the labor note paper bills served the function of completing all exchanges not available to settlement by direct exchange. There was a difference in the application of this device by Warren as compared to its original purpose as conceived by Owen. Where the latter had intended it as a means of effecting transactions among the different communities at New Harmony, the former reduced the scope to the local function of a limited currency, but valid among all those who engaged in any part of the business at the time store.
• 161The name “time store” was a popular designation, not an original appellation of Warren’s, and had come into general use by the end of the third month of the store’s existence. The circumstances responsible for this have aroused the interest and curiosity of several commentators, but Warren’s own explanation is the clearest.
• 162This was an innovation. It was to the interest of the customer to take up as little of the storekeeper’s time as possible, since time was one of the elements in the price settlement. Thus wrangling and higgling over prices, which Warren considered a particularly degrading feature of ordinary commerce, was eliminated in time store operations, a matter of considerable significance at a time when such functions were an almost fundamental part of merchandising. Transactions were expedited by the open display of goods and prominence of list prices, another unprecedented feature.
• 163It is interesting to note that before the store was terminated, Warren succeeded in reducing the commerce in such staples as flour, meal, beans, beef, pork and shoes to a modified labor exchange level. A set of actual labor prices based on an average estimate of the labor cost of production of each of these commodities evolved, which was posted in the store, and these changed from time to time as labor estimates fluctuated. The partial realization of an economy resting exclusively on exchange of labor notes thus took place independent of the use of legal currency.
• 164Warren’s unpretentious establishment opened its doors on May 18, 1827 and after a faltering start produced results which he found highly gratifying. The failure of New Harmony had become common knowledge in Cincinnati by the time Warren expressed his determination to begin his labor exchange store, and his friends begged him to refrain from additional attempts at reform. The promise of financial support in commencing a conventional business venture was of no avail. Nor was he inhibited by denunciations of his plan as “utopian” or “visionary,” or as just one more of the numerous tricks to aid speculating or swindling which were all too common in the port towns along the water route to New Orleans. Despite all the discouraging factors, the time store began operations, and at the end of three months had resulted in making an impression in the retail trade of the area which has since drawn the attention of students of early American economic radicalism.
• 165Warren’s methods of doing business were adopted by a neighboring merchant, while he declared that the new methods permitted him to sell as much merchandise in an hour as normally was retailed in a day. This increased activity forced him to close part of the day to rest and to furnish information as to how the labor exchange store functioned. There was a mixed reception to the new shop. Some, who considered the principles equitable, thought them a thing of the future. Others circulated rumors that Warren was an accomplice of big merchants, helping them dispose of their damaged and inferior stocks of goods. One opponent, still remembering New Harmony and the suspicion it had aroused among conservative folk, asserted that Warren was an agent of Robert Owen and had been commissioned to engage in a plot to undermine the United States. No one seemed to realize that Warren’s system was a direct blow at the money economy and the power that such a system had in determining the nature of production and the incidence of distribution. The time store founder was not to feel the full impact of a large-scale whispering campaign for some time in the future, not until the time of the founding of the much-discussed individualist colony on Long Island.
• 166Warren, in his anxiety to extend the labor exchange method in as many ways as possible, gave music lessons in the evenings to young men who understood the operation of the plan and agreed to enter as participants. He and a group of his mutual customers succeeded in securing a teacher for their children who also accepted compensation in labor notes. In 1829 he asserted that three physicians had already purchased goods on these same principles, promising professional services on demand. An agnostic, he took pleasure in telling at a later time of an influential Methodist convert to the time store principles who had interrupted an argument about a point of faith and charity with the following observation: “Well, brothers, people have been disputing for eighteen hundred years about what is true Christianity. Now, if you will go down to the corner of Fifth and Elm Streets, you will see it in operation for the first time in the world.”
• 167Warren, in his anxiety to extend the labor exchange method in as many ways as possible, gave music lessons in the evenings to young men who understood the operation of the plan and agreed to enter as participants. He and a group of his mutual customers succeeded in securing a teacher for their children who also accepted compensation in labor notes. In 1829 he asserted that three physicians had already purchased goods on these same principles, promising professional services on demand. An agnostic, he took pleasure in telling at a later time of an influential Methodist convert to the time store principles who had interrupted an argument about a point of faith and charity with the following observation: “Well, brothers, people have been disputing for eighteen hundred years about what is true Christianity. Now, if you will go down to the corner of Fifth and Elm Streets, you will see it in operation for the first time in the world.”
• 168Warren borrowed money to aid in the development of the store in its early days, but insisted on giving the lenders notes which were payable on demand. He never explained whether such payments had ever been requested or whether he had ever agreed to pay interest, or how immediate payment was possible if the sum obtained through loan had been invested in fixed capital by the time demand for its return had been made. There is no doubt, however, that he received the necessary backing, in view of the prolonged period of operations.
• 169Warren was opposed to enlarging the scope of his activities. He stressed continually that he was not attempting to put retail storekeepers out of business but trying to demonstrate principles of mutualism. He did double the capacity of the original store before the end of the first year, employing the labor of seven carpenters on the familiar exchange procedure; still he insisted on keeping the business on the same simple relationship between keeper and customer and never expanded to the extent of hiring clerks. This action would have been in the nature of a partnership under his conception of the plan, and such combination of interests was diametrically opposed to the principle of individuality which he unequivocally professed.
• 170The introduction of still another aspect of labor exchange opened his eyes to other inequalities in the economic system which he believed called for reparation. This was what he called the “report of demand.” A large sheet of paper was posted on one wall of the store on which those with particular needs made them known, and those with labor and services available for exchange stated the nature of their particular ability or capacity. At the same time he posted a list of commodities for which he would exchange the same, in an attempt to produce a “leveling” of supply. Warren’s conception of the terms “supply” and “demand” had little relation to their use in economic terminology of the present day. In his simple system, the declared desire to have a given object constituted “demand” for it, and no relation whatever to the possession of ability to pay on the basis of theoretical graduated price curves, in a money economy. He was convinced that existing economic relationships were exactly reversed in operation, to that demanded by distributive justice. The only way to bring about equity was to adapt supply to what he called “demand,” and thus eliminate the occasion for speculation in human need.
• 171The great number of requests for employment in unwanted occupations distressed him considerably, as did the observation that the labor return of children and women was artificially depressed below the level existing among adult men engaged in similar activities. This led to an investigation and condemnation of the apprentice system, which he called an “obsolete barbarity,” a deliberate and artificial restriction of employment which curtailed demand for many services and products. Thus began a full-scale campaign to spread information about all types of skills, a matter of vital concern at a time previous to the widespread adoption of automatic machinery. Warren reasoned that the cost-basis economy required the production of all goods at the lowest possible labor cost. This could only be accomplished by the employment of each in the activity he could do best, and therefore cheapest, from the point of view of labor time involved. It was at this time also that he observed another harrassing element in the labor exchange operation. This was the problem of determining intensity of relative hours of labor, further complicated by the fact that the most repulsive types of labor were generally the poorest paid. This matter he wrestled with for the remainder of his life, and was never able to satisfy himself as to the best method of solution.
• 172Warren’s activities in marketing spread over a wide range. He sold almost any product or article which he thought would demonstrate his theory. In all transactions, he attempted a drastic underselling of his competitors to provide the greatest possible contrast between the profit system and the coöperative system. This occasionally involved practices which were not strictly in accordance with equity, such as purchases in wholesale lots, often at public auctions. Such were sacrifices and not exchanges of equivalents. He justified this action by asserting that other retailers bought as much as he, but failed to pass on the saving to their patrons.
• 173Warren’s activities in marketing spread over a wide range. He sold almost any product or article which he thought would demonstrate his theory. In all transactions, he attempted a drastic underselling of his competitors to provide the greatest possible contrast between the profit system and the coöperative system. This occasionally involved practices which were not strictly in accordance with equity, such as purchases in wholesale lots, often at public auctions. Such were sacrifices and not exchanges of equivalents. He justified this action by asserting that other retailers bought as much as he, but failed to pass on the saving to their patrons.
• 174The Cincinnati Time Store was finally liquidated in May, 1830. Warren had long been satisfied that his plan was sound and that he had succeeded in regulating his business by principles without utilizing what he called “the customary machinery of organization,” or the “erection of any power over the individual.” In fact, he thought that this had been proven in the first six months. The original intent to start communities based on such principles he found more difficult to promote than expected. As early as November, 1827, he had contemplated beginning on a holding of 1500 acres of land in Logan County, Ohio, which had been offered for the purpose by an enthusiast named Samuel Hyde Saunders. Nothing was done at this time, nor even a year later when he considered moving outside the city and forming a model village.
• 175The Cincinnati Time Store was finally liquidated in May, 1830. Warren had long been satisfied that his plan was sound and that he had succeeded in regulating his business by principles without utilizing what he called “the customary machinery of organization,” or the “erection of any power over the individual.” In fact, he thought that this had been proven in the first six months. The original intent to start communities based on such principles he found more difficult to promote than expected. As early as November, 1827, he had contemplated beginning on a holding of 1500 acres of land in Logan County, Ohio, which had been offered for the purpose by an enthusiast named Samuel Hyde Saunders. Nothing was done at this time, nor even a year later when he considered moving outside the city and forming a model village.
• 176The Cincinnati Time Store was finally liquidated in May, 1830. Warren had long been satisfied that his plan was sound and that he had succeeded in regulating his business by principles without utilizing what he called “the customary machinery of organization,” or the “erection of any power over the individual.” In fact, he thought that this had been proven in the first six months. The original intent to start communities based on such principles he found more difficult to promote than expected. As early as November, 1827, he had contemplated beginning on a holding of 1500 acres of land in Logan County, Ohio, which had been offered for the purpose by an enthusiast named Samuel Hyde Saunders. Nothing was done at this time, nor even a year later when he considered moving outside the city and forming a model village.
• 177A third and final decision to begin a village was made in April, 1829. Despite the hundreds of customers who had made purchases in the time store, all involving the acceptance and utility of labor notes, Warren ruefully recalled that only four people were ready to take part in this adventure. Warren learned, as had Owen before him, that the inertia of the status quo was a formidable antagonist to such a sweeping reorganization of human affairs as he entertained. He was too practical to think that such a plan as he proposed could succeed if supported only by the poor, the needy, and others at the bottom of the economic ladder, even though it was one of the principal reasons for starting in the first place, to eliminate the perpetuation of this by-product of what he called “legalized cannibalism.” He remarked that hundreds were interested in his proposition who were too poor to afford the loss of the month’s income which removing and changing positions would occasion. Others had different objections. Some feared inability to obtain employment under the new conditions. Others did not look favorably upon the equitable compensation of women and children or the proposal to teach the secrets of carefully guarded trades in a few days or weeks. Those with means admitted in private conversations the worth of some of his proposals yet abstained entirely from offering assistance.
• 178A third and final decision to begin a village was made in April, 1829. Despite the hundreds of customers who had made purchases in the time store, all involving the acceptance and utility of labor notes, Warren ruefully recalled that only four people were ready to take part in this adventure. Warren learned, as had Owen before him, that the inertia of the status quo was a formidable antagonist to such a sweeping reorganization of human affairs as he entertained. He was too practical to think that such a plan as he proposed could succeed if supported only by the poor, the needy, and others at the bottom of the economic ladder, even though it was one of the principal reasons for starting in the first place, to eliminate the perpetuation of this by-product of what he called “legalized cannibalism.” He remarked that hundreds were interested in his proposition who were too poor to afford the loss of the month’s income which removing and changing positions would occasion. Others had different objections. Some feared inability to obtain employment under the new conditions. Others did not look favorably upon the equitable compensation of women and children or the proposal to teach the secrets of carefully guarded trades in a few days or weeks. Those with means admitted in private conversations the worth of some of his proposals yet abstained entirely from offering assistance.
• 179Warren felt at the time that those who participated in his time store still lacked the capacity to understand the nature of the proposals the way he had explained them. Many years later, however, he became convinced that, looking back on the wreckage of several community attempts, failure had been due more to the planned efforts of an element among the business community, which he claimed had everywhere created difficulties and placed obstacles in the way of success of his non-profit community projection. In spite of the mounting gloom occasioned by the unresponsiveness of his former coöperators to the call to form a village, the plan was persevered in, and the land was selected upon which to move, in the spring of 1829.
• 180Warren felt at the time that those who participated in his time store still lacked the capacity to understand the nature of the proposals the way he had explained them. Many years later, however, he became convinced that, looking back on the wreckage of several community attempts, failure had been due more to the planned efforts of an element among the business community, which he claimed had everywhere created difficulties and placed obstacles in the way of success of his non-profit community projection. In spite of the mounting gloom occasioned by the unresponsiveness of his former coöperators to the call to form a village, the plan was persevered in, and the land was selected upon which to move, in the spring of 1829.
• 181Warren felt at the time that those who participated in his time store still lacked the capacity to understand the nature of the proposals the way he had explained them. Many years later, however, he became convinced that, looking back on the wreckage of several community attempts, failure had been due more to the planned efforts of an element among the business community, which he claimed had everywhere created difficulties and placed obstacles in the way of success of his non-profit community projection. In spite of the mounting gloom occasioned by the unresponsiveness of his former coöperators to the call to form a village, the plan was persevered in, and the land was selected upon which to move, in the spring of 1829.
• 182At this point the strange interlude of Warren’s relations with Robert Dale Owen and Frances Wright occurred. Owen, the gifted son of the New Harmony patron, and the brilliant Scotswoman, champion of a dozen unpopular causes ranging from Negro equality to anti-clericalism, had moved the center of operations of the intellectual radical movement associated with New Harmony from Indiana to New York City. There they had renewed publication of the celebrated community newsorgan, The New Harmony Gazette, under the name The Free Enquirer, devoting most of the space now to the propagation of the general sentiments of freethought, with generous portions of acrimonious controversy with adherents of various brands of orthodoxy as a special feature. Althought more concerned with their protracted joust with biblical fundamentalists, and in particular, the wave of emotional revivalism then sweeping through some elements of Protestantism, the two young liberals retained a sympathetic interest in all attempts at community organization. This was understandable, since most of this activity during this period was primarily a backwash of the parent essay at New Harmony.
• 183At this point the strange interlude of Warren’s relations with Robert Dale Owen and Frances Wright occurred. Owen, the gifted son of the New Harmony patron, and the brilliant Scotswoman, champion of a dozen unpopular causes ranging from Negro equality to anti-clericalism, had moved the center of operations of the intellectual radical movement associated with New Harmony from Indiana to New York City. There they had renewed publication of the celebrated community newsorgan, The New Harmony Gazette, under the name The Free Enquirer, devoting most of the space now to the propagation of the general sentiments of freethought, with generous portions of acrimonious controversy with adherents of various brands of orthodoxy as a special feature. Althought more concerned with their protracted joust with biblical fundamentalists, and in particular, the wave of emotional revivalism then sweeping through some elements of Protestantism, the two young liberals retained a sympathetic interest in all attempts at community organization. This was understandable, since most of this activity during this period was primarily a backwash of the parent essay at New Harmony.
• 184At this point the strange interlude of Warren’s relations with Robert Dale Owen and Frances Wright occurred. Owen, the gifted son of the New Harmony patron, and the brilliant Scotswoman, champion of a dozen unpopular causes ranging from Negro equality to anti-clericalism, had moved the center of operations of the intellectual radical movement associated with New Harmony from Indiana to New York City. There they had renewed publication of the celebrated community newsorgan, The New Harmony Gazette, under the name The Free Enquirer, devoting most of the space now to the propagation of the general sentiments of freethought, with generous portions of acrimonious controversy with adherents of various brands of orthodoxy as a special feature. Althought more concerned with their protracted joust with biblical fundamentalists, and in particular, the wave of emotional revivalism then sweeping through some elements of Protestantism, the two young liberals retained a sympathetic interest in all attempts at community organization. This was understandable, since most of this activity during this period was primarily a backwash of the parent essay at New Harmony.
• 185The Ohio activities of Josiah Warren had attracted the attention of the land and labor reform press of New York City, where slums were already a problem, and depressed segments of the population a feature of the urban social structure. It is not unusual, then, to find the editors of The Free Enquirer becoming concerned to the point of proposing collaboration in achieving the aims of Warren’s non-political scheme for alleviating the evidences of economic distress which had come to his attention during the few years of his reform career.
• 186Owen prevailed upon Warren to postpone the beginning of his community in Ohio in favor of a similar beginning in the vicinity of New York. This was made to appear extremely attractive through the promise of considerable financial and material support already at the former’s bidding. Owen, as had his father, had in mind a much larger unit than Warren. This was apparently to be publicized through a press campaign, intending no doubt to include the pages of the Free Enquirer, in a broad program of propaganda to advertise its potential advantages. Dazzled by this offer, Warren abandoned the proposed movement to the outskirts of Cincinnati, and thus the decision came about to continue the time store into a third year.
• 187Owen’s existing business precluded the immediate start of the New York village, and what was intended to be a temprary lull dragged on. Thus the time store celebrated a third anniversary before Warren liquidated the remaining stock and began the momentous journey to New York, anticipating memorable results. But still another delay intervened; Owen was called to Europe and the plans languished. Yet there still remained a strong spirit of affirmation of the previous support of Warren on his part and that of Fanny Wright as well. The Free Enquirer continued to express confidence in the eventual success of a Warrenite colony, and Warren himself was still hopeful, but the summer found him somewhat subdued. In mid-July he addressed a communication to his Cincinnati associates, confessing that nothing tangible had been accomplished, but asserting that the call to begin practical operations would come at an early date.
• 188Owen’s existing business precluded the immediate start of the New York village, and what was intended to be a temprary lull dragged on. Thus the time store celebrated a third anniversary before Warren liquidated the remaining stock and began the momentous journey to New York, anticipating memorable results. But still another delay intervened; Owen was called to Europe and the plans languished. Yet there still remained a strong spirit of affirmation of the previous support of Warren on his part and that of Fanny Wright as well. The Free Enquirer continued to express confidence in the eventual success of a Warrenite colony, and Warren himself was still hopeful, but the summer found him somewhat subdued. In mid-July he addressed a communication to his Cincinnati associates, confessing that nothing tangible had been accomplished, but asserting that the call to begin practical operations would come at an early date.
• 189Owen’s existing business precluded the immediate start of the New York village, and what was intended to be a temprary lull dragged on. Thus the time store celebrated a third anniversary before Warren liquidated the remaining stock and began the momentous journey to New York, anticipating memorable results. But still another delay intervened; Owen was called to Europe and the plans languished. Yet there still remained a strong spirit of affirmation of the previous support of Warren on his part and that of Fanny Wright as well. The Free Enquirer continued to express confidence in the eventual success of a Warrenite colony, and Warren himself was still hopeful, but the summer found him somewhat subdued. In mid-July he addressed a communication to his Cincinnati associates, confessing that nothing tangible had been accomplished, but asserting that the call to begin practical operations would come at an early date.
• 190Turning from presses to type faces, he brought out two small volumes in 1844 which made use of a revived interest in an early eighteenth century stereotyping process. This involved the substitution of a composition of unusual hardness in the place of metal, which reduced printing costs markedly and furthered the contest with publishers in general. These pioneer booklets, which sought to revolutionize the system of musical notation and thereby enable aspiring musicians to reduce the expense and duration of training, met no better fate than any of his other earlier accomplishments, other than to further the development of what he later designated as “Universal Typography.”
• 191Turning from presses to type faces, he brought out two small volumes in 1844 which made use of a revived interest in an early eighteenth century stereotyping process. This involved the substitution of a composition of unusual hardness in the place of metal, which reduced printing costs markedly and furthered the contest with publishers in general. These pioneer booklets, which sought to revolutionize the system of musical notation and thereby enable aspiring musicians to reduce the expense and duration of training, met no better fate than any of his other earlier accomplishments, other than to further the development of what he later designated as “Universal Typography.”
• 192Turning from presses to type faces, he brought out two small volumes in 1844 which made use of a revived interest in an early eighteenth century stereotyping process. This involved the substitution of a composition of unusual hardness in the place of metal, which reduced printing costs markedly and furthered the contest with publishers in general. These pioneer booklets, which sought to revolutionize the system of musical notation and thereby enable aspiring musicians to reduce the expense and duration of training, met no better fate than any of his other earlier accomplishments, other than to further the development of what he later designated as “Universal Typography.”
• 193Warren compromised his principles in respect to previous unyielding theoretical opposition to patents. At the urging of Owen’s sons and his old friend, the midwestern scientific agricultural pioneer Solon Robinson, the process was patented in the spring of 1845. Robinson not only brought the documents to the Patent Office at this time, but acted as agent for Warren. While travelling through the Midwest, he publicized its merits, which were recognized by editors with whom he came in contact all along the Ohio. The inventor himself illustrated his ability as an engraver with numerous examples of his artistry, several of which embellished the heretofore stark pages of New Harmony’s weekly journal.
• 194Warren compromised his principles in respect to previous unyielding theoretical opposition to patents. At the urging of Owen’s sons and his old friend, the midwestern scientific agricultural pioneer Solon Robinson, the process was patented in the spring of 1845. Robinson not only brought the documents to the Patent Office at this time, but acted as agent for Warren. While travelling through the Midwest, he publicized its merits, which were recognized by editors with whom he came in contact all along the Ohio. The inventor himself illustrated his ability as an engraver with numerous examples of his artistry, several of which embellished the heretofore stark pages of New Harmony’s weekly journal.
• 195Warren compromised his principles in respect to previous unyielding theoretical opposition to patents. At the urging of Owen’s sons and his old friend, the midwestern scientific agricultural pioneer Solon Robinson, the process was patented in the spring of 1845. Robinson not only brought the documents to the Patent Office at this time, but acted as agent for Warren. While travelling through the Midwest, he publicized its merits, which were recognized by editors with whom he came in contact all along the Ohio. The inventor himself illustrated his ability as an engraver with numerous examples of his artistry, several of which embellished the heretofore stark pages of New Harmony’s weekly journal.
• 196Regardless of patent protection and the attendant publicity, no attempt was made to plumb the commercial possibilities of the composition cast method of stereotyping. To Warren it meant more as an opportunity to expand his own printing activities, especially in broadcasting the message of equitable commerce. Since he had contemplated for some time publishing a comprehensive summary of his philosophy and explorations in social matters, it now was possible to fulfill these aspirations with a minimum of expense. Despite the interruptions caused by the handicaps of working without help in an endeavor where the benefits of division of labor were obvious, the work persevered. The difficulties were not all mechanical; Warren was not a literary man, and wrote painfully, in a simple but often stilted style, which was further burdened by a somewhat archaic vocabulary, even in the estimate of his contemporaries. The final product of two years of collation and revision of a mass of notes taken sporadically for almost twenty years, all its imperfections considered, was a document of undeniable simplicity. Published in April, 1847, Josiah Warren’s Equitable Commerce became the first important publication of anarchist doctrine in America, and with minor deletions, additions and revisions, went into more editions within the next thirty years than any other product of native anarchist thought to this time.
• 197Regardless of patent protection and the attendant publicity, no attempt was made to plumb the commercial possibilities of the composition cast method of stereotyping. To Warren it meant more as an opportunity to expand his own printing activities, especially in broadcasting the message of equitable commerce. Since he had contemplated for some time publishing a comprehensive summary of his philosophy and explorations in social matters, it now was possible to fulfill these aspirations with a minimum of expense. Despite the interruptions caused by the handicaps of working without help in an endeavor where the benefits of division of labor were obvious, the work persevered. The difficulties were not all mechanical; Warren was not a literary man, and wrote painfully, in a simple but often stilted style, which was further burdened by a somewhat archaic vocabulary, even in the estimate of his contemporaries. The final product of two years of collation and revision of a mass of notes taken sporadically for almost twenty years, all its imperfections considered, was a document of undeniable simplicity. Published in April, 1847, Josiah Warren’s Equitable Commerce became the first important publication of anarchist doctrine in America, and with minor deletions, additions and revisions, went into more editions within the next thirty years than any other product of native anarchist thought to this time.
• 198Regardless of patent protection and the attendant publicity, no attempt was made to plumb the commercial possibilities of the composition cast method of stereotyping. To Warren it meant more as an opportunity to expand his own printing activities, especially in broadcasting the message of equitable commerce. Since he had contemplated for some time publishing a comprehensive summary of his philosophy and explorations in social matters, it now was possible to fulfill these aspirations with a minimum of expense. Despite the interruptions caused by the handicaps of working without help in an endeavor where the benefits of division of labor were obvious, the work persevered. The difficulties were not all mechanical; Warren was not a literary man, and wrote painfully, in a simple but often stilted style, which was further burdened by a somewhat archaic vocabulary, even in the estimate of his contemporaries. The final product of two years of collation and revision of a mass of notes taken sporadically for almost twenty years, all its imperfections considered, was a document of undeniable simplicity. Published in April, 1847, Josiah Warren’s Equitable Commerce became the first important publication of anarchist doctrine in America, and with minor deletions, additions and revisions, went into more editions within the next thirty years than any other product of native anarchist thought to this time.
• 199Equitable Commerce as an expression of social discontent catches much of the flavor of the world-wide revolt sentiment of the mid-nineteenth century. In an apocalyptic discourse reminiscent of, but anticipating Marx’s Communist Manifesto, Warren also looked out upon a civilization approaching a revolutionary crisis, but with the battle lines being drawn on a broad parasite-producer rather than the more limited capitalist-industrial worker line:
• 200The Warrenite program, however, discarded familiar reform interpretations and solutions, all varieties of collectivism, paternalism, violent revolutionary and political action. Elaborating on some of the ideas already expressed in other writings and further confirmed by experience and convictions produced thereby, he launched a delineation of the individualist stand on the proper reward of labor, security of personal property and freedom of the individual. Summed up in the two slogans “Sovereignty of the Individual” and “Cost the Limit of Price,” Equitable Commerce concentrated on preparing a case for this kind of individualism. The belief in the absolute inviolability of the individual personality expressed in its pages placed him in a camp opposite from the advocates of reform through legislation or violence.
• 201In Warren’s estimation, liberty and security were complementary, not opposites; liberty was the foundation upon which security of both person and property rested, and as long as there was one insecure person, there was potential insecurity for all others. This called for location in proper relation of power, which for each individual extended over his own person and property, and not beyond. This was expected to result in the undermining of the structure of all authority obtained from any other source than that of voluntary grant. To admit boundless individuality in nature and then to create institutions requiring agreement contrary to one’s will appeared the height of contradiction. Personal differences were an inseparable part of the individual personality, which he refused to see by-passed in the “pursuit of policy and expediency.” On this basis he rejected institutional activity which ultimately depended upon compliance on the part of the members unable to see it conducive to their best interests to do so, or which compromised them by demanding conformity as the price for favors allegedly furnished.
• 202In Warren’s estimation, liberty and security were complementary, not opposites; liberty was the foundation upon which security of both person and property rested, and as long as there was one insecure person, there was potential insecurity for all others. This called for location in proper relation of power, which for each individual extended over his own person and property, and not beyond. This was expected to result in the undermining of the structure of all authority obtained from any other source than that of voluntary grant. To admit boundless individuality in nature and then to create institutions requiring agreement contrary to one’s will appeared the height of contradiction. Personal differences were an inseparable part of the individual personality, which he refused to see by-passed in the “pursuit of policy and expediency.” On this basis he rejected institutional activity which ultimately depended upon compliance on the part of the members unable to see it conducive to their best interests to do so, or which compromised them by demanding conformity as the price for favors allegedly furnished.
• 203In Warren’s estimation, liberty and security were complementary, not opposites; liberty was the foundation upon which security of both person and property rested, and as long as there was one insecure person, there was potential insecurity for all others. This called for location in proper relation of power, which for each individual extended over his own person and property, and not beyond. This was expected to result in the undermining of the structure of all authority obtained from any other source than that of voluntary grant. To admit boundless individuality in nature and then to create institutions requiring agreement contrary to one’s will appeared the height of contradiction. Personal differences were an inseparable part of the individual personality, which he refused to see by-passed in the “pursuit of policy and expediency.” On this basis he rejected institutional activity which ultimately depended upon compliance on the part of the members unable to see it conducive to their best interests to do so, or which compromised them by demanding conformity as the price for favors allegedly furnished.
• 204In Warren’s estimation, liberty and security were complementary, not opposites; liberty was the foundation upon which security of both person and property rested, and as long as there was one insecure person, there was potential insecurity for all others. This called for location in proper relation of power, which for each individual extended over his own person and property, and not beyond. This was expected to result in the undermining of the structure of all authority obtained from any other source than that of voluntary grant. To admit boundless individuality in nature and then to create institutions requiring agreement contrary to one’s will appeared the height of contradiction. Personal differences were an inseparable part of the individual personality, which he refused to see by-passed in the “pursuit of policy and expediency.” On this basis he rejected institutional activity which ultimately depended upon compliance on the part of the members unable to see it conducive to their best interests to do so, or which compromised them by demanding conformity as the price for favors allegedly furnished.
• 205In the vein of his earlier writings on law, Warren continued to castigate legislation as one aspect of this denial of individual freedom. He objected particularly to the demand of unconditional fealty from all, enthusiastic or hesitant, to the wishes of the larger number. Warren saw no virtue in majorities; to him right was not a quantitative matter to be determined by sheer numbers. Should a thing be an evil when espoused by a few, the support of a larger number at a later time did not automatically change its nature, making what had been reprehensible now respectable and desirable. He refused to consider the manipulation of verbal symbols “laws” in the same sense:
• 206In the vein of his earlier writings on law, Warren continued to castigate legislation as one aspect of this denial of individual freedom. He objected particularly to the demand of unconditional fealty from all, enthusiastic or hesitant, to the wishes of the larger number. Warren saw no virtue in majorities; to him right was not a quantitative matter to be determined by sheer numbers. Should a thing be an evil when espoused by a few, the support of a larger number at a later time did not automatically change its nature, making what had been reprehensible now respectable and desirable. He refused to consider the manipulation of verbal symbols “laws” in the same sense:
• 207In the vein of his earlier writings on law, Warren continued to castigate legislation as one aspect of this denial of individual freedom. He objected particularly to the demand of unconditional fealty from all, enthusiastic or hesitant, to the wishes of the larger number. Warren saw no virtue in majorities; to him right was not a quantitative matter to be determined by sheer numbers. Should a thing be an evil when espoused by a few, the support of a larger number at a later time did not automatically change its nature, making what had been reprehensible now respectable and desirable. He refused to consider the manipulation of verbal symbols “laws” in the same sense:
• 208Warren thus attached to law, by virtue of its perpetual uncertainty, the blame for the great majority of crimes. Statute law could hardly be expected to do anything except aggravate and expand the diseases of society over a larger area. Warren scorned the explanation of laws and government by political theorists who sought to relate them to reality as manifestations of a common desire for the protection of life and possessions. He refused to believe that human history revealed such realization, and was convinced that the state had failed in its basic mission in providing protection for its citizens. What was worse, in his mind, was the effect of the governing process, which had been precipitated into a struggle for control of the governing privilege. This was the result, he explained, of the discovery that in an environment characterized by insecurity, the least insecure were the persons who were successful in obtaining control of the governing power. Thus rulers and ruling groups, protected temporarily by virtue of holding power, punished crimes by death and imprisonment without realizing that these were consequences of their own acts. The increasing complexity of laws and lawmaking succeeded in increasing the volume of violations rather than producing the security of the society which they purported to represent. On still another level, there was the spectacle of a government involving its citizens in group responsibilities from which many may have preferred to remain apart, and in extreme situations, such as wars, compelling them to desert their own interests and even die without recourse of any sort.
• 209Warren thus attached to law, by virtue of its perpetual uncertainty, the blame for the great majority of crimes. Statute law could hardly be expected to do anything except aggravate and expand the diseases of society over a larger area. Warren scorned the explanation of laws and government by political theorists who sought to relate them to reality as manifestations of a common desire for the protection of life and possessions. He refused to believe that human history revealed such realization, and was convinced that the state had failed in its basic mission in providing protection for its citizens. What was worse, in his mind, was the effect of the governing process, which had been precipitated into a struggle for control of the governing privilege. This was the result, he explained, of the discovery that in an environment characterized by insecurity, the least insecure were the persons who were successful in obtaining control of the governing power. Thus rulers and ruling groups, protected temporarily by virtue of holding power, punished crimes by death and imprisonment without realizing that these were consequences of their own acts. The increasing complexity of laws and lawmaking succeeded in increasing the volume of violations rather than producing the security of the society which they purported to represent. On still another level, there was the spectacle of a government involving its citizens in group responsibilities from which many may have preferred to remain apart, and in extreme situations, such as wars, compelling them to desert their own interests and even die without recourse of any sort.
• 210Warren thus attached to law, by virtue of its perpetual uncertainty, the blame for the great majority of crimes. Statute law could hardly be expected to do anything except aggravate and expand the diseases of society over a larger area. Warren scorned the explanation of laws and government by political theorists who sought to relate them to reality as manifestations of a common desire for the protection of life and possessions. He refused to believe that human history revealed such realization, and was convinced that the state had failed in its basic mission in providing protection for its citizens. What was worse, in his mind, was the effect of the governing process, which had been precipitated into a struggle for control of the governing privilege. This was the result, he explained, of the discovery that in an environment characterized by insecurity, the least insecure were the persons who were successful in obtaining control of the governing power. Thus rulers and ruling groups, protected temporarily by virtue of holding power, punished crimes by death and imprisonment without realizing that these were consequences of their own acts. The increasing complexity of laws and lawmaking succeeded in increasing the volume of violations rather than producing the security of the society which they purported to represent. On still another level, there was the spectacle of a government involving its citizens in group responsibilities from which many may have preferred to remain apart, and in extreme situations, such as wars, compelling them to desert their own interests and even die without recourse of any sort.
• 211Warren thus attached to law, by virtue of its perpetual uncertainty, the blame for the great majority of crimes. Statute law could hardly be expected to do anything except aggravate and expand the diseases of society over a larger area. Warren scorned the explanation of laws and government by political theorists who sought to relate them to reality as manifestations of a common desire for the protection of life and possessions. He refused to believe that human history revealed such realization, and was convinced that the state had failed in its basic mission in providing protection for its citizens. What was worse, in his mind, was the effect of the governing process, which had been precipitated into a struggle for control of the governing privilege. This was the result, he explained, of the discovery that in an environment characterized by insecurity, the least insecure were the persons who were successful in obtaining control of the governing power. Thus rulers and ruling groups, protected temporarily by virtue of holding power, punished crimes by death and imprisonment without realizing that these were consequences of their own acts. The increasing complexity of laws and lawmaking succeeded in increasing the volume of violations rather than producing the security of the society which they purported to represent. On still another level, there was the spectacle of a government involving its citizens in group responsibilities from which many may have preferred to remain apart, and in extreme situations, such as wars, compelling them to desert their own interests and even die without recourse of any sort.
• 212Warren thus attached to law, by virtue of its perpetual uncertainty, the blame for the great majority of crimes. Statute law could hardly be expected to do anything except aggravate and expand the diseases of society over a larger area. Warren scorned the explanation of laws and government by political theorists who sought to relate them to reality as manifestations of a common desire for the protection of life and possessions. He refused to believe that human history revealed such realization, and was convinced that the state had failed in its basic mission in providing protection for its citizens. What was worse, in his mind, was the effect of the governing process, which had been precipitated into a struggle for control of the governing privilege. This was the result, he explained, of the discovery that in an environment characterized by insecurity, the least insecure were the persons who were successful in obtaining control of the governing power. Thus rulers and ruling groups, protected temporarily by virtue of holding power, punished crimes by death and imprisonment without realizing that these were consequences of their own acts. The increasing complexity of laws and lawmaking succeeded in increasing the volume of violations rather than producing the security of the society which they purported to represent. On still another level, there was the spectacle of a government involving its citizens in group responsibilities from which many may have preferred to remain apart, and in extreme situations, such as wars, compelling them to desert their own interests and even die without recourse of any sort.
• 213Warren proposed a solution which dispensed with government other than that of each person over himself; “. . . never shall man know liberty until each and every individual is acknowledged to be the only legitimate sovereign of his or her person, time and property, each living and acting at his own cost; . . . The only ground upon which man can know liberty is that of disconnection, disunion, individuality.” American radical writing has few expressions which match the determination found in this piece of anti-statist literature, even though the complexity of human relationships in modern urban industrial society make its message of separation of interests sound of little use or pertinence. Other than this course, Warren predicted, would only increase conflicts and consequently would require more direction from the “outside,” more mediation, more intervention, which he termed “government.”
• 214Warren proposed a solution which dispensed with government other than that of each person over himself; “. . . never shall man know liberty until each and every individual is acknowledged to be the only legitimate sovereign of his or her person, time and property, each living and acting at his own cost; . . . The only ground upon which man can know liberty is that of disconnection, disunion, individuality.” American radical writing has few expressions which match the determination found in this piece of anti-statist literature, even though the complexity of human relationships in modern urban industrial society make its message of separation of interests sound of little use or pertinence. Other than this course, Warren predicted, would only increase conflicts and consequently would require more direction from the “outside,” more mediation, more intervention, which he termed “government.”